United States: Foreign students are not allowed to stay if their classes are online

Immigration and Custom Enforcement said

Tuesday, 7th July 2020

The US said on Monday that no foreign student will be allowed to stay in the country if all their classes take place online as a result of coronavirus pandemic.  

The US Immigration and Custom Enforcement said that the State Department “will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will these students be permitted to enter the United States”.

“Nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States”.

ICE stated, “Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status”.

“If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings”.

Many of the colleges in the US have not revealed their fall semester’s plans. Some universities like Harvard have announced that all classes will be online, whereas some universities are planning for combining in-person and online sessions.  Harvard stated that 40% of the students will be permitted to come back to the campus while their instruction is going to be online.

The Institute of International Education said that for the academic year 2018-19, there were above a million students from different countries, which accounted for 5.5% of higher education population in the US. They added $44.7 billion to the economy of the US in 2018.

Indian students will be worst-affected after Chinese, followed by the students from South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Source: India Today