It's Thursday July 9th 2020, I wanted to shoot today's video about the ICE announcement that they were going to make all the F, M, and J visa holders leave the United States if their universities or colleges were having online classes only.
Now you don't need me to tell you once again that this is just another example of the Trump team being as cruel and as mean to immigrants as they can possibly be.
But let me just walk through with you what's happening and then I'll share my thoughts.
There's a rule that says that international students have to attend most of their classes in a classroom.
So the idea is that if you have international students who want to get educated at a U.S. university, then they should be going to in-person classes.
If all of their classes are going to be online,they think there's no reason to be in the country.
That's been a rule for a while now. It's not a new rule.
But the interpretation of the rule is what's at issue here today.
Right after July 4th, Immigration Customs Enforcement issued a memo saying that if F students, M students, or J students are going to university and that university is not going to have in-person classes in a classroom then the international students should go back home.
This is very disruptive for the international students.
Many of these students have been here for a long time and they're getting ready to graduate, here we're going to pull the rug out from under them.
Now there's been absolutely no evidence that international students are bringing disease to the United States, the United States is doing a fine job of spreading the coronavirus without international students, so what this really is, is just another attack on legal immigration.
The Trump Administration is trying to figure out ways to mess with immigrants, and now specifically international students.
Universities are really already in a tough situation without this.
International students pay a very high tuition rate to study at these universities, higher than in-state or out-of-state tuition rates, and now universities are losing that too.
Universities are really going to feel a pinch if this rule is allowed to stand now in a sick way.
The Trump administration is trying to use this rule to force universities to reopen. The Trump team thinks that the president's re-election chances will improve if the economy improves.
Now that's completely messed up.
It's just so disgusting, abnormal, self-centered, and not what this country needs.
This is just a bald-faced attempt to save a failing presidency and it's also an administrative attempt to do what they could not do legislatively.
They've wanted to attack legal immigrants and legal immigration since the day they got into office, and this is just one more example of that.
I was heartened to see last night that Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging this order.
I'm going to read over that lawsuit today and maybe I'll give you some more details on that tomorrow.
For now, if you're an international student and you find yourself wondering what to do, I would say just sit tight and plan as if classes are going to go ahead.
Plan is if a federal judge might slow this thing down.
There's all kinds of things that might happen and we just don't know.
I know that it's disruptive. I know it's upsetting.
I want you to know that I feel for you, that we feel for you here at the Hacking Immigration Law, and we're going to do everything that we can to help with this to the extent that we can.
So I'm gonna be on the local NPR affiliate tomorrow at 12 p.m. CST talking about this.
You can tune in tomorrow from here.
