Trump’s U-turn On Student Visa Offers Glimmer Of Hope To Immigrant Students And Teachers Alike

US President Donald Trump’s administration backtracked on the cancellation of student visas on April 25, when the US Justice Department told a federal court that officials were working on a new system for reviewing and terminating them. The volte-face gives a welcome relief to thousands of foreign students in the US, who not only faced an uncertain future at their universities but also faced deportation. The system before the reversal of policy, though it might be a temporary relief given Trump’s track record, was complex. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been revoking the visas of a number of students for some time on the grounds of mostly minor legal infractions or participation in protests construed as being inimical to the US’s national security, mainly over Israel’s genocide in Palestine. But these revocations did not affect students already in the US since they merely withdrew students’ permission to enter the country. But the situation was exacerbated in January, when the ICE, which maintains the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database tracking around 1.1 million foreign students, abruptly terminated the records of nearly 5,000 of them. This action cleared the path to their deportation, causing confusion and panic amongst both the students and many universities that were affected.

It is not clear what caused this abrupt change in tack, though the Trump administration has hedged its bets by reiterating that the ICE reserved the right to terminate SEVIS records for a number of reasons. It is possible that more than a hundred lawsuits filed by affected students against the terminations prompted a rethink. The point is as much about the future of the US as it is about the future of a few thousand students, though. The Trump administration has launched a reckless attack on the country’s higher education system by withholding federal funds and making sinister demands for compliance with partisan agendas, as well as using the ICE and border protection agencies to make life difficult for foreign students. Any flight of students from the US to other destinations in North America, Europe and Oceania is bound to bring about a rapid decline in the fabled standards of teaching and research in US universities. A climate that is unfriendly to immigrants, hoping to take their expertise as teachers and researchers, will compound the savage attack on education itself. Other countries have been quick to offer sanctuary to both persecuted students and faculty members deprived of the oxygen of funding. As trends in India show, students are rapidly rethinking the wisdom of committing themselves to studying in the US in light of caprice and uncertainty. The possible breakdown of the US higher education system would be a loss to the entire world.

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