The Trump administration said it would no longer require foreign students to attend in-person classes during the coronavirus pandemic in order to remain in the country.
By Miriam Jordan and Anemona Hartocollis
Published July 14, 2020|Updated July 15, 2020, 12:46 p.m. ET
In a rare and swift immigration policy reversal, the Trump administration on Tuesday bowed to snowballing opposition from universities, Silicon Valley and 20 states and abandoned a plan to strip international college students of their visas if they did not attend at least some classes in person.
The policy, which would have subjected foreign students to deportation if they did not show up for class on campus, had thrown the higher education world into turmoil at a time when universities are grappling with whether to reopen campuses during the coronavirus pandemic.
The loss of international students could have cost universities millions of dollars in tuition and jeopardized the ability of U.S. companies to hire the highly skilled workers who often start their careers with an American education.
Two days after the policy was announced on July 6, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed the first of a litany of lawsuits seeking to block it.
On Tuesday, minutes before a federal judge in Boston was to hear arguments on their challenge, the judge, Allison D. Burroughs, announced that the administration had agreed to rescind the policy and allow international students to remain in the country even if they are taking all their classes online.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/coronavirus-international-foreign-student-visas.html.
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