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Trump Rescinds Order Denying Foreign Students Visas

  The United States government rescinded its controversial decision to revoke foreign student visas whose courses move online due to coronavirus, a federal judge said … Continue reading Trump Rescinds Order Denying Foreign Students Visas


File photo: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event about citizens positively impacted by law enforcement, in the East Room of the White House on July 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. The president highlighted life-saving actions by law enforcement officers and cited these examples as a potential negative effect that defunding the police would have on the lives of Americans. Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event about citizens positively impacted by law enforcement, in the East Room of the White House on July 13, 2020 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP

 

The United States government rescinded its controversial decision to revoke foreign student visas whose courses move online due to coronavirus, a federal judge said Tuesday.

The universities of Harvard and MIT, with the support of a number of other institutions, had taken legal action against the move that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on July 6.

“The government has agreed to rescind” the decision as well as any implementation of the directive, Judge Allison Burroughs said in a brief hearing.

Harvard and MIT earlier this month had asked the court to block the order announced by ICE that students must leave the country if their classes are only online, or transfer to a school offering in-person tuition.

This photo illustration shows a visa stamp on a foreign passport in Los Angeles on June 6, 2020. Chris DELMAS / AFP

 

The measure was seen as a move by President Donald Trump administration to put pressure on educational institutions that are adopting a cautious approach to reopening amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The universities say in their lawsuit that the order would harm students “immensely,” both personally and financially.

There were more than one million international students in the US for the 2018-19 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE).

AFP