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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Key quote:

>” Visa requirements for students have always been strict and coming to the US to take online-only courses has been prohibited.”

So it’s a reinforcement of policy rather than change although some institutions would like to see accommodation for this kind of circumstance —which is understandable if students came here with the intent to attend in person, but it’s worth noting the the visa requirements have not changed

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That requirement was waived this spring. They're unwaiving it.[0]

Rigid enforcement of rules designed for a world that doesn't exist anymore, and won't for a while, is a deliberate choice and not one that we have to make.

The pandemic is an ongoing rolling emergency. Making life worse for people for no good reason may be the default, but that doesn't mean that the people who can waive the rule shouldn't be held responsible when they decide not to. Inaction and action are nearly indistinguishable from the side of the people being affected.

[0] See this guidance from March: "Given the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 emergency, SEVP will allow F-1 and/or M-1 students to temporarily count online classes towards a full course of study in excess of the limits... This temporary provision is only in effect for the duration of the emergency" Absolutely nothing substantive has changed since then, but ICE has apparently changed its mind and- implausibly- decided the emergency is over. It's absurd.

https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2...

The university i'm associated with, because of the pandemic, not only all the international students are having online classes, but the international grad students teaching the classes are giving them online too.

And all those grad students on a teaching scholarship were told to remain in the US because their scholarship is tied to being residents of the State for some tax reason or another for the institution.

fun times.

Couldn't they offer a required in-class portion of their degree (INT 5001: "Let's Talk about COVID and being international students for 20 minutes") for all international students where completion is required for their degree but attendance is optional? Effectively, no one physically goes to the class, but it's enough to keep students in the US because it's not an online-only class.

I don’t know if that would work. The whole reason for the on-site requirement is to avoid or clamp down on Visa scams. And a loophole like that is exactly what a scam school would do.

It wouldn't, and if you tried, you'd end up with this all over again:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-fake-u...

ICE generally is not fond of people circumventing the rules. You'd basically be taking your students' tuition and then rolling the dice to see how badly they get punished by ICE, possibly including imprisonment, deportation, and a lifetime ban from the US.

The regulations are written so as to exclude the possibility[0]. I wouldn't play chicken with ICE. Get this wrong, and you can be held in immigration detention until ICE can convince your home country to let them deport you back[1], which may be a while considering countries have been travel-banning the US on public health grounds.

[0] "For F-1 students enrolled in classes for credit or classroom hours, no more than the equivalent of one class or three credits per session, term, semester, trimester, or quarter may be counted toward the full course of study requirement if the class is taken on-line or through distance education and does not require the student's physical attendance for classes, examination or other purposes integral to completion of the class." https://www.nafsa.org/_/file/_/amresource/8cfr2142f.htm

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ice-fake-u...

The regulations will be updated (new regs will be in the Federal Register as a Temporary Final Rule) and the limit of one class / three credits will be lifted for students attending universities following a hybrid model.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-ex...

Foreign students can only take 1 online class at our institution due to current policy. When we scrambled to move all online during the stay-home orders, one question we didn't have answered was whether or not those students could even stay if we went entirely online.

The policy didn't change at all, it's super restrictive.

What institutions I'm affiliated with are asking is for temporary flexibility during COVID-19. Specific start and end dates based on periodic review of health measures.

And the answer is still a resounding 'no' from any sort of federal representative we can get in touch with.

This, honestly, feels like the federal immigration department is trying to punish schools who are more cautious about opening up like nothing is happening. It tastes bad.

edit: edited to reflect the inaccuracy as pointed out by PeterisP. SEVIS is overseen by ICE, not the department of education. Our representatives for SEVIS are generally connected to the DoE in some fashion. I didn't realize folks wouldn't know that ICE oversees immigrants, and that the Ed Department isn't responsible for making this policy.

It's not like any education representative can change immigration policy or grant some exceptions, it's not up to them.

If taking online classes means that the students visas become invalid, or if their current visa restrictions mean that it's prohibited for them to be in an online-only program, then that's exactly what it means, and it's wrong to blame schools or education department about it, it's not about education but about immigration policy - the domain of Department of State, Congress, etc.

Surely every person involved should simply be turning to the people above/before them in the chain of command and saying "this is impossible, we need to be more flexible now". And whoever is blocking that escalation is reasonably part of the problem.

Escalating only works when you can reach reason in the higher chain. You can only go to senior leadership with the options and consequences. We have option A or option B, or we do nothing and we have consequence C. When that leader picks consequence C then you're stuck.

We have an administration that doesn't value academia or the visa program. So it's no surprise they're willing to sacrifice it in name of "schools must open".

Firstly, I don't know of any situation where that's true. If your manager is insisting on something impossible or immoral/unethical, you escalate. Escalating doesn't have to be within the organisation. It can be going public, going sideways (to clients/collaborators), or going way up (to investors/funders/government/regulators).

Secondly, what I was saying is that whoever is the person that refuses to take it higher - that person is the problem. If you're stuck underneath them, go above them, or go public, or do whatever you need to do to avoid compromising yourself.

For someone in education there's nobody to escalate to with the power to affect immigration policy. The senior leaders in any university can't do that, and the senior leaders in Department of Education can't do that, it's not their domain to decide that.

You'd have to escalate up to the president, he's the only link between the people the grandparent poster is complaining to and the people who decide the things grandparent poster wants to change. And it may well be that the response of the top administration is that everything works as intended, that the effect you're complaining about is something they want to increase, not fix.

“It’s the law” is a terrible rationale though. Our values should inform our laws and their interpretation, not the other way around.

There is a clear externality forcing this situation and it is clearly more detrimental to force them out of the country than to just make special accommodations/provisions. Pass a bill if that makes it more palatable and set it to have a termination date with the ability to “re-up” if this situation continues. But shrugging and going “them’s the rules” when it suits us and being flexible elsewhere (freelancers getting unemployment benefits, for instance) seems arbitrary and, frankly, capricious.

Some logic needs to come in too though, what is the point of an international student renting an apartment in the US and taking a class over the Internet?

Student visas make good sense, allow people from around the world to come here and get an education which is better or different and have a cultural exchange... but if coming here just gets you the cultural exchange of going to the grocery store and watching lectures online that could be watched from anywhere... what's the point?

I personally have a problem with how international students are used as cash cows and then later often as a lower class of intellectual labor in labs (I have heard first hand stories of this happening, more than once). When universities have an ample supply of people willing to do anything in order to get citizenship, the people who don't have that circumstance are pushed out because of the poor conditions enabled by the many people who accept it. Career academia sucks. Grads and post grads are paid little and way overworked chasing after the dream of a rare tenured faculty position.

Yet, they continued to come over and do this. They likely had a reason. Whether its prestige, a cultural experience, available work contacts post-study or whatever.

And as for 'lower class intellectual labor', lets talk medical Residents? Years of indentured servitude post-doc. And we consider that reasonable.

Not every international student has a good internet connection at home, and collaborating with students in the US could be extremely different if they come from a very different time zone.

If you can study in the US, generally you are not poor. You are paying high rent in the US. They can afford more than one internet connection with mostly likly significantly reduce living costs.

Not just "generally". People bemoan high costs of college education in the US (and I tend to agree with them), not realizing that for international students, the tuition pricing alone can be easily twice the cost it is for out-of-state-students (which is already at least twice the cost for in-state students).

International students pay twice the price of tuition alone, not even mentioning all other extra expenses they have to pay. And since they cannot utilize a lot of financial aid available to US residents (federal student loans, certain scholarships, etc.), they pretty much have to have a lot of money in cash to be able to just pay for college.

Note: I am not saying that since they are very likely rich, they deserve to deal with all those struggles. And I get it, there could be some international students who come from a far-from-wealthy family, where all their money were pooled towards their college education. That seems to be a rare exception though, from what I have observed (haven't met a single international student like that, but plenty of the former kind).

That would be a slim minority. Most intl students are in au courant language “privileged” and are either upper middle or at least middle class. Very few live the life of a lower stratum American.

One point of an international student renting an apartment in the US and taking a class over the Internet is that they're in the right time zone, and don't have to stay up all night to attend classes and other sessions (with the known negative health effects of doing so, along with how to handle the fact that the rest of the family is sharing small living quarters that makes 2am classes a problem for the whole family).

> what is the point of an international student renting an apartment in the US and taking a class over the Internet?

They're two years into a program, didn't create the circumstances that are forcing them to take their education entirely online, and the notion that they can return to their home country and participate in classes that might be happening at 3:00 am local time seems pretty far fetched?

Most of these upper-level online classes are participatory, not Coursera-style "watch a recording".

They’re already here, travel is potentially dangerous (especially a large exodus of international students), time zone issues, ability to pick back up where they left off easily, possible local employment/internships, apartments/hoisting they’re under a lease for, the undoubtedly insane cluster it’ll be when folks try to return...the list goes on dude. That’s off the top of my head. Surely you can see how burdensome this “solution” is?

I am not trying to take a side but adding a point or two worth consideration.

It's a total dick move by them to enforce it right now. If the student is normally enrolled full time in person and they just have this/next semester online, they shouldn't be required to pack their bags and leave for just one or two semesters. That's very different from the intent of not letting online students physically enter the us for no reason. Already many students were stuck here in may since international travel was restricted by many countries. Doing stupid pointless shit like this has no positive effect.

Technically it may be a reenforcement but Corona Virus has changed quite a few things and it is also a practical fact that a lot of people are stranded and cannot travel to their home countries right now that easily. So you cannot just "enforce" the law and it needs a more balanced approach by the administration. If they don't act according to the current situation, it is not a good thing regardless of what the law is. Immigration is very discretionary when it comes to these types of situations. They can always say "Hey there is this law but considering where we are with Corona, we will give you some flexibility".

Right, but unlike a designed-to-be-online program, depending on the university/each individual class, many of the classes are not going to be designed with timezone differences in mind, not designed to get through local internet filters, etc. The thinking behind the rules is that there is no need to live in the US to participate in a fully-online program, but this is not applicable to a regular program that is temporarily forced to run online due to the pandemic only.

Additionally, this ignores the financial losses (ex costs of breaking leases, selling property, expensive/hard to schedule air travel which may require more legs than usual now, shipping, large currency conversions) caused by a sudden move back. Additionally, there will be costs to get internet access and other necessary materials back home. Some institutions still have not announced their plans, and they can change at any time.

These are people who want to and have been living on campus. They are not just taking advantage of the visa to sit in front of a computer screen for four years--so there is no reason they should have to leave. This clearly has no relevance to the initial intent of the policy, and refusing to waive it in this case demonstrates the government's effort to hurt people of other nationalities in any way possible.

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