The US isn’t exactly going through the best of times at the moment. Not only do they have a president who divides opinion, they also have a global pandemic to worry about. Speaking of the coronavirus pandemic, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch of the Department of Homeland Security has issued brand new rules for exchange students and it’s safe to say that no one’s really going to be happy about it.

The new rules basically state that visas will no longer be issued to students who are enrolled in schools or programs that are fully online for the fall semester. On top of that, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection will now no longer even allow these student to enter the country. Yup.

This essentially means that students who are already enrolled in programmes there that have switched to online-only course have pretty much two choices; Leave the country or transfer to a school with some sort of in-person instruction if they intend on maintaining their lawful status in the country.

According to ICE’s new rules, students that attend a hybrid model – that is, a mixture of online and in-person classes -will be allowed to take more than one class or three credit hours online.” So there you have it kids, if your school has a fully online module in place now and you intend on staying in the country, you’re going to have to find a new school.

This new rules will without a doubt give universities a headache given that they’re now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do they do away with a fully online module and risk the lives of their students or do they risk losing their students? At the same time, parents pay good money to send their kids to the US, what do they make of this?

According to a 2020 ICE report, there were 1.55 million active non-immigrant student visas under the Student and Exchange visitor program (SEVP) in 2018, with 1.3 of those enrolled in higher education courses and about 85,000 in grade school.

Source: Al-Jazeera