The US government has announced new guidelines that will ban any new foreign students who have recently taken admission in an American college or university and whose classes are to be conducted online. This new order has been issued by the Donald Trump Administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department (ICE).
The ICE statement released on Friday night states that students who have received admission after 9 March 2020 will not be able to come to the US until further orders. These are non-immigrant students, whose entire semester studies are online. For this, educational institutions will have to issue a new Form I-20. Through this, the eligibility status of non-immigrant students can be checked.
The ICE has issued on 9 March under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. ICE has all foreign students to follow it. It said that educational institutions should promote distance learning. In other words, this order is currently being issued to promote the online classes. It states that this order is being issued due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Two weeks ago, ICE issued a similar order. In this, with the ban of foreign students coming to America, students whose classes are online were asked to leave the country. The educational institutions of America along with foreign students also raised questions on this. Later changes were made to it.
The Trump Administration's attitude towards foreign students is shocking. Indeed, the administration wants schools to be opened now despite the epidemic whereas, cases are increasing. 18 out of 50 states and around 200 universities have opposed it.