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Deputies and universities .. Objections to Trump's plan to expel thousands of foreign students
between Corona and expulsion .. Trump's decisions threatening thousands of foreign students
Do foreign students pay a corona tax difference between Trump and Democrats?
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Thousands of foreign students in the United States and anxious people are mounting between the threat of President Donald Trump's administration to forcibly transfer them and the risk of returning to their university seats in light of the new Corona epidemic (Covid-19), while Democratic lawmakers and universities decided to act to counter the Trump plan.
There are more than 40,000 foreign students at public universities in California, and about 5,000 in Harvard, institutions that have decided to limit their programs to online education when the new academic year resumes in the fall.
According to a decision announced by the US Immigration Police on Monday, which challenged Harvard and MIT universities and the state of California before the courts, these students can no longer remain on American soil, and they are side victims of Trump's decision in his effort to compel all American schools and universities to reopen their doors despite the spread of the emerging Corona virus. .
Speaker of the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives Gerold Nadler and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Nationality in the House of Representatives, along with more than 90 Democratic members of Congress, called on the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency to immediately rescind new directives threatening to deport foreign students if their institutions decide to provide lessons via Internet.
In a joint message, the legislators expressed "their deep concerns that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency directives are not motivated by public health considerations, but rather by hostility towards immigrants and non-citizens."
The lawmakers said that the agency's announcement of its plans to compel or deport international students who receive a full course of lessons online "is cruel and unacceptable" and pointed out that the matter is "a blatant attempt to keep international students hostage to force universities to reopen their doors even with increasing cases of corona" .
They added that it was a cruel, meaningless, and xenophobic attempt aimed at using non-citizens as political pawns to compel colleges and universities financially to reopen the campus this fall, as they put it.
My students' anxiety
In light of the continuing differences between American politicians, thousands of foreign students, including Taymour Ahmed, 25, a Pakistani student at Cal State University in Los Angeles, who said in statements to French News Agency, said: "I am afraid that it will affect me if they do not offer. Lessons with personal presence, "he added," I am concerned, this threatens to change my future and my projects. "
Another student enrolled at a major university in Texas to prepare a master’s thesis said he was planning to pursue his lessons online in the fall out of caution about the Covid-19 epidemic, after completing the last semester in the same way.
But the 25-year-old Indian student is forced to return to college in order not to lose his visa. He said on condition of anonymity that "the cost of medical treatment (in the event of hospitalization as a result of the Covid-19 epidemic) is much higher than in my country, and this is cause for fear."
"I talk to many people who are terrified. We are alone in a foreign country, and I have no one to take care of me" if I get sick.
An Indian student preparing a master’s degree in electronics at a major university in Arizona, which has become the epicenter of the epidemic, expressed the same concerns.
She will have to go back to college to complete her research and take up her duties to guide younger students, even if "it seems extremely difficult to control the spread of the virus on such a crowded campus."
The majority of American universities (84% according to the "Chronicle of Higher Education") are moving to a formula that mixes virtual classes and university education, which will allow foreign students to avoid deportation under the new Trump administration decision.
Among these institutes is the University of Southern California, which is working on a new formula that provides more lessons that require personal attendance to the university, after it was going to provide all its classes online.
Unfair,
but many fear a new wave of epidemic will spread in the fall, which will force the institutes to secure their classes entirely on the Internet, and the result will be the departure of foreign students.
"They cannot control the virus, the situation may deteriorate," said the 25-year-old Indian engineering student, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that it seems to me really unfair that foreign students bear the consequences of the exacerbation of the epidemic while they have no say in it.
Pending the completion of her research and discussion of her master’s thesis in November, she said that she would live “in constant anxiety,” explaining, “I invested three years of my life and worked hard to obtain this certificate. It would be terrible if my visa was canceled.”
After the number of foreign students in the United States doubled in 15 years, it has stabilized since 2015 at the level of about 1.09 million students in 2019, according to figures from the Institute of International Education.
The United States is no longer attracting students as before, in light of the exorbitant fees in most major American institutes, the rise of competing universities, especially in Europe, and Trump's tough immigration policy.
Aaron Richlin Melnik of the US Immigration Council warned that recent decisions "threaten to weaken one of the most important features of the United States, which is its best education system in the world" in the area of graduate studies.
The Indian student had so far intended to stay in the United States to complete a doctoral thesis and possibly pursue more lessons after her, but today she is reluctant "in light of the way the US administration treats immigrants and holders of temporary entry visas."