The Trump administration has walked back a policy that would strip international college students of their U.S. visas if their courses were entirely online, ending a proposal that had thrown the higher-education world into turmoil.
The policy announced on July 6 prompted an immediate lawsuit from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and on Tuesday, the government and the universities reached a resolution, according to the judge overseeing the case.
Under the agreement, which was announced by the judge, the Trump administration is reinstating a policy that had been put into place in March during the coronavirus pandemic that gives international students flexibility to take all of their classes online and remain legally in the country with a student visa.
"Both the policy directive and the frequently asked questions would not be enforced anyplace" under the agreement, Judge Allison Burroughs said, adding that it applied nationwide.
The guidance that was the subject of the agreement, issued by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, would have required foreign students to take at least one in-person class or leave the country. Students who returned to their home countries when schools closed in March would not have been allowed back into the United States if their fall classes were solely online.
ARKANSAS' STUDENTS
The news was welcome in Arkansas, where colleges and universities remain committed to holding on-campus classes this fall.
"It is great news for us," said Amanda Korinihona, a 26-year-old student in the Master of Business Administration program at Henderson State University.
Korinihona, after contemplating returning home to the Solomon Islands in the uncertainty, said she is planning now to stay. That decision followed conversation with her parents, though she had been concerned about the cost of returning home, if forced to.
Blake Smith, international-student adviser at Henderson State, called the decision "a relief."
"It is and was a huge burden on them, students who have been here and acted in good faith," Smith said. "For them it certainly feels like a punishment whether it was meant as that or was not. I've had too many teary-voiced people calling me on he phone asking, 'What does this mean for me?'"
Henderson State has about three dozen international students. More than 3,600 international students enrolled in Arkansas colleges and universities in fall 2018, the latest year for which data is available.
The number of international students has been declining in Arkansas and the U.S. in recent years.
Smith said enrolling this fall already will be challenging for new international students, many of whom are unable to get visas to the U.S. while embassies are closed during the pandemic. He's working on setting up the students he can with online-only courses for the fall.
LAWSUITS FILED
The higher-education world was thrown into disarray, with most colleges already well into planning for the fall semester. Two days after the policy was announced, Harvard and MIT filed the first of several lawsuits seeking to stop it.
The attorneys general of at least 18 states, including Massachusetts and California, also sued, claiming that the policy was reckless, cruel and senseless. Scores of universities threw their support behind the litigation, along with organizations representing international students.
On Tuesday, more than a dozen technology companies, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, also came out in support of the Harvard and MIT lawsuit, arguing that the policy would harm their businesses.
"America's future competitiveness depends on attracting and retaining talented international students," the companies said in court papers.
The announcement brings relief to thousands of foreign students who had been at risk of being deported, along with hundreds of universities that were scrambling to reassess their plans for the fall in light of the policy.
With the policy rescinded, the immigration-enforcement agency will revert to a directive from March that suspended typical limits around online education for foreign students.
The agency did not immediately comment on the decision.
Harvard President Lawrence Bacow called it a "significant victory."
"While the government may attempt to issue a new directive, our legal arguments remain strong and the Court has retained jurisdiction, which would allow us to seek judicial relief immediately to protect our international students should the government again act unlawfully," Bacow said in a statement.
MIT's president said his institution also stands ready "to protect our students from any further arbitrary policies."
"This case also made abundantly clear that real lives are at stake in these matters, with the potential for real harm," President L. Rafael Reif said in a statement. "We need to approach policymaking, especially now, with more humanity, more decency -- not less."
The government had argued in court papers that the new requirement was actually more lenient than rules that had been in effect for close to 20 years, which required foreign students to take most of their classes online to remain legally in the country with a student visa. It said it was exercising its discretion and trying to be as flexible as possible within the rules.
The government had temporarily suspended that rule on March 13, when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency and campuses across the country began shutting down, with classes going online. However, on July 6, the government announced that foreign students could not remain in the United States if their studies were entirely online.
'I FEEL RELIEF'
The reversal Tuesday cheered students across the nation who had been on edge.
"I feel relief," said Andrea Calderon, a 29-year-old biology graduate student from Ecuador. "It would have been a very big problem if I had to leave the country right now."
The City College of New York student said returning home would have made it much harder to finish her thesis and pursue doctorate. Internet access at home in Ecuador is spotty, she said, and going through the process to come back to the U.S. in the future would be too expensive.
Rahul Lobo, 19, from Goa on the west coast of India, said he feels "an immeasurable amount of relief."
"As it is, we're living in very uncertain times, and the recent ... policy just made things even more uncertain," said Lobo, a rising junior at the University of Notre Dame. "Suddenly I wasn't worrying about whether I could get back to campus, but more whether I would even be able to finish my degree in four years."
The American Council on Education, which represents university presidents, applauded the pullback of the rule. The group called the policy "wrongheaded" and said it drew unprecedented opposition from colleges.
Many opponents, however, were hesitant to call it a closed case. Massachusetts' Democratic attorney general, who is leading a separate lawsuit against the policy, warned that the Trump administration may attempt again to impose limits on international students.
"This is why we sue. The rule was illegal and the Trump Administration knew they didn't have a chance," Maura Healey said on Twitter. "They may try this again. We will be ready."
Harvard and MIT argued that immigration officials violated procedural rules by issuing the guidance without justification and without allowing the public to respond. They also argued that the policy contradicted the agency's March 13 directive telling schools that existing limits on online education would be suspended "for the duration of the emergency."
The suit noted that Trump's national emergency declaration has not been rescinded and that virus cases are spiking in some regions.
Immigration officials, however, argued that they told colleges all along that any guidance prompted by the pandemic was subject to change. They said the rule was consistent with existing law barring international students from taking classes entirely online.
Federal officials said they were providing leniency by allowing students to keep their visas even if they study online from abroad.
Information for this article was contributed by Anemona Hartocollis and Miriam Jordan of The New York Times; by Collin Binkley, Carolyn Thompson and Sophia Tareen of The Associated Press; and by Emily Walkenhorst of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.