They can take more than usual, but even if the school's not open 100% they cannot take "an entirely online course load". Some schools have already announced all instruction will be online and a lot more are probably going to.
They must still take an in person class, and risk having their visa revoked if not. That's just not about being in the US, you can't be a foreign student at a US university without a visa. You'd have to take academic leave until you can have it reapproved.
This doesn't help. Not everyone has access to the same infrastructure in their home town/country. Let alone the fact that a class at $X AM/PM in the US may be in the late evenings, late nights in their home country.
To be clear even before Trump students have not been eligible for a visa for online study.
Not an opinion on if students who were going to study in person the fall should get to come/stay just a clarification.
Online school some students will mean having to sleep in day and do school at night, though for some it will mean vastly cheaper living costs.
Painful for some, maybe sorta of beneficial for others.
In the US, in college areas, bad for those renting out apartments, good for renters who will now see a reduction in rent.
Well, before this year there wasn't a global pandemic. That's really meaningless. This wouldnt be an issue if it had happened last year, or the year before, or the year before...1918.
The point is that any functional government would have accounted for the fact that there is a global pandemic, which if nothing else, might actually make it impossible for some students to even leave the US, before publishing this guidance.
Edit: Also, this is a deliberate undoing of a temporary allowance they had already made. From the first sentence of the linked document:
> Temporary procedural adaptations related to online courses permitted by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) during the height of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)crisis will be modified for the fall 2020 semester.
> To be clear even before Trump students have not been eligible for a visa for online study.
There have been concessions made throughout the pandemic, to alleviate its impact on citizens and businesses. It's true that this was forbidden before, but there's a choice made in every enforcement action.
International students are a boon to the country. It costs good money to provide their education, and keeping them around afterward brings value not just in rent, but their very contributions to our society.
What about students that want to avoid crowded lecture halls but have in person study groups with a few friends? This authoritarian action is extremely heavy handed and forecloses the possibilities that genuine students might have to protect themselves, educate themselves and others, and help protect society.
I don't know what your college experience was like, but for me often the informal aspects and hitting the books was more useful than formal lecture classes (labs are a different story ofc). Tutoring by grad students / teaching assistants was good too. University sanction is a high bar for something that is organic.
The reason for this is somewhat obvious: people don't retain and model complex information easily from just listening. They have to process it, interact with problems, and talk about it with people.
Note that this FORCES Int students to come back to the US and attend at least some in person classes. Having your student visa revoked doesn't just mean you can't be in the US, you just can't be a student at a US institution without that visa.
>Meanwhile, international students who remain in their home countries will only be permitted to maintain their “Active status” and take an online courseload remotely if their school is online-only.
Meaning they lose the visa which they don't need because they aren't in the country?
I suppose there may be some delays in getting a new visa later due to the backlog, but I wouldn't say the danger of such a hassle equates to being forced to return to a country undergoing a pandemic. In fact one big reason we are doing online and hybrid online/in-person courses in the fall is because we expect delays international students getting visas to come/return.
> Meaning they lose the visa which they don't need because they aren't in the country?
No, they still need the visa even if they are out of the country taking online-only classes. However, they can't keep the visa unless the university is online-only (including classes they aren't enrolled in).
How will they fight this? Republicans in Congress are against legal immigration so nothing will pass Congress. The right wing hates colleges and universities because they're primarily made up of liberals, look at any Fox News and Brietbart articles.
> Expect universities to fight this hard. Fees from international students make up a huge portion of their budget.
And so begins the inevitable death spiral of Academia as we know it.
I'm a big proponent of an International Work force and recognize that is what made California what it is today and that includes bringing in International students, the problem lies with the administration who abuses this system while taking Local/State/Federal taxes and does everything in its power to skew this, and inevitably restrict access to the domestic student's to basic things like lectures/labs, by overwhelming the system to accommodate the higher paying International cohort and making ever grander Campus Life amenities to attract them. Eric Weienstein has discussed in detail that its been a systematic effort to drive the cost of labour ever lower and is systemic and includes the higher tier Universities where he was an alumni: MIT and Harvard.
After University I was one of 3 US based workers in a Lab department of ~20 including the CLS who was from Germany but a US citizen by marriage, the rest of the techs and associates were from Vietnam, India, and China and I knew we all worked those crazy 60+ hour weeks back then in the shaky post-financial crises situation to earn our keep as we all had debt to pay off, so we all shared a collective trauma but seldom spoke outside of work, as the buyout from Novartis was happening.
They started staggering the US worker's breaks and lunch hours in an effort to prevent us from talking about the abysmal work environment we found ourselves in and what we'd do about it. I'm not pro-union, and would never agree to one, but even I thought that was an overt act on their behalf, especially since so much of Swiss Corporate culture is in fact Union based.
And even though it was never discussed a part of me knew the non-US workers were not being paid the same as us as they all required work visas and their tax rates were horrible as well.
I knew in my Junior/Senior year during the 2008 crises it was typical for the Indian students in our health sciences department to rent a house and have like 15+ people in a 3 bedroom off campus just to make ends-meet. Chances are they were doing that bed hot-swap I heard about in the Valley where roommates are prioritized by work schedules in such a way that they could have 4 beds in each bedroom and have it each serve 8 people when fully optimized.
I rented a room on airbnb in Palo Alto while I was looking for a place in Sunnyvale that had that this model, they called it a 'long term' hostel, but whatever it was it was f'ing sad.
Jesus Christ, we need to move away from this horrible system, and as painful as it may seem in the short term I'm glad its happening. This isn't 'paying your dues' its outright exploitation and the creation of a perpetual underclass.
Paying your dues would be waiting tables, or cleaning floors, or painting houses in the Summer: this is a total loss of Human dignity so that Universities can pay its administration obscene amounts of money in what is supposed to be a Public Good that's subsidized by the People, instead its State financed, vulture capitalism at it's worst and I'm glad its finally getting disrupted!
From what I heard Canada is one of the countries, where it is difficult to immigrate. I heard, that you need to prove, that you are doing a job, which could not be done by a Canadian, who is seeking a job, for example.
Is any of that true? How is it for students? Can they simply go to Canada without such requirements?
Not at all. Canada is very welcoming to people and particularly values the following attributes: young, well-educated especially in hot disciplines such as software, fluent in English or French (bonus for both), Canada-educated, previously worked in Canada. The requirements are straightforward and the process is transparent. You can find out where you might stand right here: https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/crs-tool.asp
You're trying to portray these requirements as transparent and easy but they are incredibly hard to be met by most people yeah, especially compared to the requirements for American Immigration system.
The only reason why America is hard to immigrate to is because far too many people in line ahead of you. You can immigrate to America without being educated, be able to speak English, to have ever worked anywhere.
I know a Canadian girl who wanted her American boyfriend to move to Canada but it was incredibly hard because of Canadian immigration process requirements, so instead she moved to the US.
The Canadian job requirement is essentially a prerequisite for anyone to be able to hire you in Canada because Canadians are very risk-averse (what other Canadians told me), there are stories and stories on quora about Indian immigrants getting 4-5 interviews in a day, the day they qualify for the tn1 Visa as opposed to essentially being unemployed during the time they were in Canada.
All the things your listing are paper requirements, but they don't match the reality, as I'm experiencing with trying to get my own brother to Canada.
I don't know if you have had experiences with the US immigration system, but let me tell you, mine don't match what you said.
I'm an EU citizen who came to the US five years ago.
Not only I had to prove _several times_ that I have a bachelor's degree, but each time I had to apply, either for a visa, the renewal of such visa, or any other USCIS related process, I had to submit:
1. Updated documents about my marriage, my children, and my criminal, work, and financial records from my home country. These haven't changed in the past five years, yet I still have to provide them.
2. Several, lawyer-approved, questionnaires, both filled by myself and my company.
3. My company has to pay a hefty processing fee. Once I get to deposit the documents in person, I have to pay a non refundable "fraud prevention" fee of ~$500, on top of the $120 fee _per person_, just to hand my documents to the consulate official. This happens every two to three years.
Nothing had to do with people "ahead" of me.
Obviously, no chance to immigrate if you don't have a job lined up in the US already. Failure to fulfill any of these requirements would void the application, which takes ~4 months.
Seasonal and agricultural workers _may_ be able to immigrate to the US for a few months, usually six to twelve. Other than that, unless you are a celebrity, or a Nobel prize recipient, or an Olympic athlete, or are willing to invest $500,000 to create who knows how many jobs in the US, I can't think of any other way to immigrate that is not job or study related.
From what I understand, Canada does have a more transparent process, where the requirements are closer to "are you professionally qualified to work on these jobs?" and "would you be able to integrate?". The US system is designed mostly to filter out people who cannot afford it, and both the multiple processes, and volatile nature of the USCIS, derive in many qualified immigrants getting kicked out of the country just because something changes at the worst possible moment.
I have been through multiple H1B applications, a Green Card application, and right now going through Naturalization process, on the other end, I am getting my brother through Canadian process.
Regarding the points you made, all these things are applicable for Canadian process too (my brother is stuck trying to prove the documents and degree because of the lockdown), its' just that in American system there are far too many people ahead of you this is why it takes much longer.
You're lucky that you have the skillset (and age) Canada values, otherwise it would be extremely difficult for you to migrate to Canada (whereas it isn't that much of a problem for US, unless you are in the unlucky line, i.e. China, India or Mexico).
> its' just that in American system there are far too many people ahead of you this is why it takes much longer
Again, not entirely correct. In fact, there are several steps during these processes where applicants have to literally just wait for months, e.g. prevailing wage while applying for a green card.
> whereas it isn't that much of a problem for US, unless you are in the unlucky line, i.e. China, India or Mexico
There are only three groups of people who have it relatively easy, nowadays, to get a long term visa in the US: the O group (individuals with an extraordinary ability), the E-1 and E-2 groups (traders, investors), and the R group (religious workers). Anyone outside those is either currently banned from enter the country, e.g. H1-B visa holders without an entry stamp in their passports, or are subjected to extremely long waits to get their visas. And while there is a factor about nationality, that only applies to green cards, as L visas are per company percentage based, and H visas run through a lottery.
So, again, from what I understand, it is way easier to immigrate to Canada than the US, as the USCIS is purposely curbing visa applications.
> You're trying to portray these requirements as transparent and easy
I said "transparent and straightforward" not "easy". Every single one of the attributes that Canada likes (other than age) is something you can control. Whereas the US is basically impossible for Indians due to a factor they have no control over: place of birth. Note Canada also has a separate track for skilled tradespeople - they aren't just taking college grads.
> Canadian job requirement is essentially a prerequisite for anyone to be able to hire you in Canada...there are stories and stories
I can give you anecdotes of people who went to Canada and found jobs within weeks. I think it's highly dependent on the field and your professional network. New immigrants often have no network in Canada. Is it substantially easier for fresh immigrants (i.e. people who come directly, without working in the US previously) to start working in the field of their choice in the US?
By the time a Canadian immigrant can qualify for a TN they've built up work experience and a professional network in North America. This makes job hunting in the US easier. I've found the reverse is true too; having worked in the US, getting interviews and offers in Canada is pretty easy.
Bye to some of the 40 odd Billion dollars which flows into the economy from these students. While the US closes their borders, other countries will be willing to take these students in.
The universities are doing more economic damage to our youth than they are bringing in to our current account. The universities need major reform, we should possibly be confiscating their endowments. Demand from wealthy international students abroad is one factor driving up tuition, which puts our middle class deeper and deeper in debt.
So imagine a monkey is driving a truck, and it's headed straight for you. You're like, "What fools would let a monkey drive a truck??". The crowd scatters, cursing the stupid monkey, and those who would let it drive the truck. Someone eventually jumps on the truck and tosses the monkey out of the driver's seat. Or maybe the monkey bails out.
You put a sensible obedient human driving the truck, and say "Thank goodness we're safe again.", and go back to your business. The weird thing is, it seems like a common problem that has been happening for years, this monkeys getting into trucks and careening into the human population in various places around the world.
Of course it's not the monkey. Monkey's can't even drive trucks. The truck was being operated by remote control. The monkey is just a ruse to hide the truth. And when you carefully observe this pattern of monkeys and trucks, you can discern that it is some complex pattern of herding humans or human effects around the earth.
One could say the monkey was put there by "nationalists" but that's just a label of psychological manipulation, since everyone wants to have pride in their nation and wants their nation to prosper. You could say those secretly herding people with trucks are "globalists", but that doesn't adequately describe the situation, since who wouldn't want the world acting together solving problems with harmonious purposes?
If you think there may be some truth to this, I suggest we start by making darn sure trucks don't have remote controls in them. Of course this is figuratively and literally exactly the opposite of what many, perhaps unsuspecting, people are working towards. Also better for the long term, find those operating the trucks (which isn't exactly people, given the trans-generational nature) and figure out what's going on, and have them realize that such artificial systems of control are not beneficial and are doomed to failure.
If the reason for the Visa in the first place is to allow students to attend classes, and there are no classes to attend, what is the problem with this?
Seems if a University has no in person classes, most all students will stay home, avoid high priced dorms, dining plans, etc., and campus will be empty anyway.
> If the reason for the Visa in the first place is to allow students to attend classes, and there are no classes to attend, what is the problem with this?
If this had been announced in March, I'd feel very differently. College usually starts in September, about two months away.
Sure, two months isn't an unreasonable time for finding new housing - but usually when you're moving you've got a lot more warning than that.
Add the complication that they need to relocate to another country, which will include international airfare. If any of them own anything that doesn't fit in a carry-on, they now have to look in to international shipping or replacing it.
And, again, they only have two months to do this. I usually start planning international travel 3-6 months in advance so that I can get a good price on tickets.
Not all students are from countries with great internet access. If you're a Chinese student, you might not have access to many apps professors might assume you'd have access to. The living situation you go back to might not be conducive to studying. Time zone changes will pose a challenge for keeping jobs, maintaining friendships, and doing job networking.
As far as I understand, the original purpose of the rule is to prevent people from entering the US with a student visa without actually studying on site. It doesn't make sense in the context of Covid for people who are already living and studying in the US. They didn't choose an online course, why should they have to leave the country? It doesn't help anybody, it only causes unnecessary harm. I have several friends who currently do their PhDs in the US. They are not amused.
46 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 25.3 ms ] threadhttps://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/bcm2007-01.pdf
Not an opinion on if students who were going to study in person the fall should get to come/stay just a clarification.
Online school some students will mean having to sleep in day and do school at night, though for some it will mean vastly cheaper living costs. Painful for some, maybe sorta of beneficial for others.
In the US, in college areas, bad for those renting out apartments, good for renters who will now see a reduction in rent.
The point is that any functional government would have accounted for the fact that there is a global pandemic, which if nothing else, might actually make it impossible for some students to even leave the US, before publishing this guidance.
Edit: Also, this is a deliberate undoing of a temporary allowance they had already made. From the first sentence of the linked document:
> Temporary procedural adaptations related to online courses permitted by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) during the height of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)crisis will be modified for the fall 2020 semester.
There have been concessions made throughout the pandemic, to alleviate its impact on citizens and businesses. It's true that this was forbidden before, but there's a choice made in every enforcement action.
International students are a boon to the country. It costs good money to provide their education, and keeping them around afterward brings value not just in rent, but their very contributions to our society.
The reason for this is somewhat obvious: people don't retain and model complex information easily from just listening. They have to process it, interact with problems, and talk about it with people.
So it's more than just bad time zones.
They don't need a visa to take online classes from overseas.
>Meanwhile, international students who remain in their home countries will only be permitted to maintain their “Active status” and take an online courseload remotely if their school is online-only.
I suppose there may be some delays in getting a new visa later due to the backlog, but I wouldn't say the danger of such a hassle equates to being forced to return to a country undergoing a pandemic. In fact one big reason we are doing online and hybrid online/in-person courses in the fall is because we expect delays international students getting visas to come/return.
No, they still need the visa even if they are out of the country taking online-only classes. However, they can't keep the visa unless the university is online-only (including classes they aren't enrolled in).
They’re pretty thoroughly against legal immigration.
And so begins the inevitable death spiral of Academia as we know it.
I'm a big proponent of an International Work force and recognize that is what made California what it is today and that includes bringing in International students, the problem lies with the administration who abuses this system while taking Local/State/Federal taxes and does everything in its power to skew this, and inevitably restrict access to the domestic student's to basic things like lectures/labs, by overwhelming the system to accommodate the higher paying International cohort and making ever grander Campus Life amenities to attract them. Eric Weienstein has discussed in detail that its been a systematic effort to drive the cost of labour ever lower and is systemic and includes the higher tier Universities where he was an alumni: MIT and Harvard.
After University I was one of 3 US based workers in a Lab department of ~20 including the CLS who was from Germany but a US citizen by marriage, the rest of the techs and associates were from Vietnam, India, and China and I knew we all worked those crazy 60+ hour weeks back then in the shaky post-financial crises situation to earn our keep as we all had debt to pay off, so we all shared a collective trauma but seldom spoke outside of work, as the buyout from Novartis was happening.
They started staggering the US worker's breaks and lunch hours in an effort to prevent us from talking about the abysmal work environment we found ourselves in and what we'd do about it. I'm not pro-union, and would never agree to one, but even I thought that was an overt act on their behalf, especially since so much of Swiss Corporate culture is in fact Union based.
And even though it was never discussed a part of me knew the non-US workers were not being paid the same as us as they all required work visas and their tax rates were horrible as well.
I knew in my Junior/Senior year during the 2008 crises it was typical for the Indian students in our health sciences department to rent a house and have like 15+ people in a 3 bedroom off campus just to make ends-meet. Chances are they were doing that bed hot-swap I heard about in the Valley where roommates are prioritized by work schedules in such a way that they could have 4 beds in each bedroom and have it each serve 8 people when fully optimized.
I rented a room on airbnb in Palo Alto while I was looking for a place in Sunnyvale that had that this model, they called it a 'long term' hostel, but whatever it was it was f'ing sad.
Jesus Christ, we need to move away from this horrible system, and as painful as it may seem in the short term I'm glad its happening. This isn't 'paying your dues' its outright exploitation and the creation of a perpetual underclass.
Paying your dues would be waiting tables, or cleaning floors, or painting houses in the Summer: this is a total loss of Human dignity so that Universities can pay its administration obscene amounts of money in what is supposed to be a Public Good that's subsidized by the People, instead its State financed, vulture capitalism at it's worst and I'm glad its finally getting disrupted!
[1] https://mgalligan.com/post/52327738889/canada-h1b
Is any of that true? How is it for students? Can they simply go to Canada without such requirements?
Edit: That's a weird thing to be downvoted over.
The only reason why America is hard to immigrate to is because far too many people in line ahead of you. You can immigrate to America without being educated, be able to speak English, to have ever worked anywhere.
I know a Canadian girl who wanted her American boyfriend to move to Canada but it was incredibly hard because of Canadian immigration process requirements, so instead she moved to the US.
The Canadian job requirement is essentially a prerequisite for anyone to be able to hire you in Canada because Canadians are very risk-averse (what other Canadians told me), there are stories and stories on quora about Indian immigrants getting 4-5 interviews in a day, the day they qualify for the tn1 Visa as opposed to essentially being unemployed during the time they were in Canada.
All the things your listing are paper requirements, but they don't match the reality, as I'm experiencing with trying to get my own brother to Canada.
I'm an EU citizen who came to the US five years ago.
Not only I had to prove _several times_ that I have a bachelor's degree, but each time I had to apply, either for a visa, the renewal of such visa, or any other USCIS related process, I had to submit:
1. Updated documents about my marriage, my children, and my criminal, work, and financial records from my home country. These haven't changed in the past five years, yet I still have to provide them.
2. Several, lawyer-approved, questionnaires, both filled by myself and my company.
3. My company has to pay a hefty processing fee. Once I get to deposit the documents in person, I have to pay a non refundable "fraud prevention" fee of ~$500, on top of the $120 fee _per person_, just to hand my documents to the consulate official. This happens every two to three years.
Nothing had to do with people "ahead" of me.
Obviously, no chance to immigrate if you don't have a job lined up in the US already. Failure to fulfill any of these requirements would void the application, which takes ~4 months.
Seasonal and agricultural workers _may_ be able to immigrate to the US for a few months, usually six to twelve. Other than that, unless you are a celebrity, or a Nobel prize recipient, or an Olympic athlete, or are willing to invest $500,000 to create who knows how many jobs in the US, I can't think of any other way to immigrate that is not job or study related.
From what I understand, Canada does have a more transparent process, where the requirements are closer to "are you professionally qualified to work on these jobs?" and "would you be able to integrate?". The US system is designed mostly to filter out people who cannot afford it, and both the multiple processes, and volatile nature of the USCIS, derive in many qualified immigrants getting kicked out of the country just because something changes at the worst possible moment.
Regarding the points you made, all these things are applicable for Canadian process too (my brother is stuck trying to prove the documents and degree because of the lockdown), its' just that in American system there are far too many people ahead of you this is why it takes much longer.
You're lucky that you have the skillset (and age) Canada values, otherwise it would be extremely difficult for you to migrate to Canada (whereas it isn't that much of a problem for US, unless you are in the unlucky line, i.e. China, India or Mexico).
Again, not entirely correct. In fact, there are several steps during these processes where applicants have to literally just wait for months, e.g. prevailing wage while applying for a green card.
> whereas it isn't that much of a problem for US, unless you are in the unlucky line, i.e. China, India or Mexico
There are only three groups of people who have it relatively easy, nowadays, to get a long term visa in the US: the O group (individuals with an extraordinary ability), the E-1 and E-2 groups (traders, investors), and the R group (religious workers). Anyone outside those is either currently banned from enter the country, e.g. H1-B visa holders without an entry stamp in their passports, or are subjected to extremely long waits to get their visas. And while there is a factor about nationality, that only applies to green cards, as L visas are per company percentage based, and H visas run through a lottery.
So, again, from what I understand, it is way easier to immigrate to Canada than the US, as the USCIS is purposely curbing visa applications.
I said "transparent and straightforward" not "easy". Every single one of the attributes that Canada likes (other than age) is something you can control. Whereas the US is basically impossible for Indians due to a factor they have no control over: place of birth. Note Canada also has a separate track for skilled tradespeople - they aren't just taking college grads.
> Canadian job requirement is essentially a prerequisite for anyone to be able to hire you in Canada...there are stories and stories
I can give you anecdotes of people who went to Canada and found jobs within weeks. I think it's highly dependent on the field and your professional network. New immigrants often have no network in Canada. Is it substantially easier for fresh immigrants (i.e. people who come directly, without working in the US previously) to start working in the field of their choice in the US?
By the time a Canadian immigrant can qualify for a TN they've built up work experience and a professional network in North America. This makes job hunting in the US easier. I've found the reverse is true too; having worked in the US, getting interviews and offers in Canada is pretty easy.
@dang can you merge this?
You put a sensible obedient human driving the truck, and say "Thank goodness we're safe again.", and go back to your business. The weird thing is, it seems like a common problem that has been happening for years, this monkeys getting into trucks and careening into the human population in various places around the world.
Of course it's not the monkey. Monkey's can't even drive trucks. The truck was being operated by remote control. The monkey is just a ruse to hide the truth. And when you carefully observe this pattern of monkeys and trucks, you can discern that it is some complex pattern of herding humans or human effects around the earth.
One could say the monkey was put there by "nationalists" but that's just a label of psychological manipulation, since everyone wants to have pride in their nation and wants their nation to prosper. You could say those secretly herding people with trucks are "globalists", but that doesn't adequately describe the situation, since who wouldn't want the world acting together solving problems with harmonious purposes?
If you think there may be some truth to this, I suggest we start by making darn sure trucks don't have remote controls in them. Of course this is figuratively and literally exactly the opposite of what many, perhaps unsuspecting, people are working towards. Also better for the long term, find those operating the trucks (which isn't exactly people, given the trans-generational nature) and figure out what's going on, and have them realize that such artificial systems of control are not beneficial and are doomed to failure.
Seems if a University has no in person classes, most all students will stay home, avoid high priced dorms, dining plans, etc., and campus will be empty anyway.
If this had been announced in March, I'd feel very differently. College usually starts in September, about two months away.
Sure, two months isn't an unreasonable time for finding new housing - but usually when you're moving you've got a lot more warning than that.
Add the complication that they need to relocate to another country, which will include international airfare. If any of them own anything that doesn't fit in a carry-on, they now have to look in to international shipping or replacing it.
And, again, they only have two months to do this. I usually start planning international travel 3-6 months in advance so that I can get a good price on tickets.