US Visa Politics

What is the issue?

• The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (US ICE) has given new regulations for international students’ visa.
• The US administration is pursuing controversial immigration policy measures following the pandemic.

What were the ICE’s directives?

• ICE asked the students currently in the U.S. enrolled in programmes that would be administered in online mode to leave the country.
• Another possibility for these students is to transfer to a university with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status.
• If not, ICE cautioned, they risk the initiation of removal proceedings or similar immigration consequences.
• Students attending schools offering normal in-person classes could stay.
• However, they cannot take more than one class or three credit hours online.
• Visa issuance to students enrolled in universities or programmes that are conducted entirely online for the fall 2020 semester will be stopped.
• Such students will not be permitted to enter the U.S.

What is Trump’s immigration policy?

• Lawsuits were filed by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to block the ICE directive.
• This is the latest twist in an ongoing immigration policy crackdown by the Trump administration.
• These include a halt in the issuance of many visa categories as well as the halt in green card processing.

• All these halts will continue until the end of the calendar year.

What are the arguments against the move?

• There is no possible rationale behind imperilling the lives of foreign students who were admitted to universities on merit.
• These students do not pose an immediate threat to U.S. jobs.
• It may be futile to wall off large swathes of the economy to the capable foreign workers who are delivering value in many jobs in the U.S.
• So, this political move by Trump may damage, in the longer term, the economic prospects of the very U.S. people he claims to be fighting for.

Source: The Hindu