Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today announced that international students pursuing degrees at institutions offering online-only courses this fall face deportation.
Exceptions would be made for students currently enrolled or who transfer to schools with hybrid onsite and online learning delivery models, according to the agency.
The U.S. Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the United States. Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.
Hampton University and Wiley College have announced plans to go exclusively online this fall, while a number of public and private HBCUs have announced hybrid models.
Normally, this kind of nationalistic, rapid-fire immigration policy idea would typically have been published via an angry Trump tweet, and just as quickly dismissed, analyzed and diffused by scrambling White House staffers and frustrated Capitol Hill lawmakers.
But this isn’t an idea. This is a federal mandate. And according to federal data, 702 students who came to the United States in 2018 as first-time, full-time degree-seeking students at HBCUs could be subject to deportation from Hampton, Wiley and other black colleges which will opt for 100% distance learning, in addition to the hundreds of international undergraduate and graduate students currently in the United States to begin their studies at these schools this fall.
Several HBCUs have announced that the fall semester is likely to begin in early August, giving students from a base largely comprised of African Diaspora nations in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa, and some countries throughout the Middle East and Asia, less than a month to transfer or to decide about halting their studies altogether, all while weighing the consequences of learning in areas where COVID-19 infection rates are or may be spiking.
But more than this, the announcement puts HBCUs in a precarious position to deal with international student bodies representing sizable portions of out-of-state student revenues, maintaining international recruitment pipelines, and most of all, serving as the foundation of honors’ college profiles at black colleges nationwide.
Do HBCUs which have yet to announce re-opening plans change their direction to favor hybrid models, with international students earning priority placement over in-state and out-of-state students? How quickly can academic affairs divisions review course offerings to make sure that international students are placed in hybrid classes?
And how should HBCUs manage the public relations of a federal mandate for students just weeks ahead of a choice between living in a campus dormitory or the threat of deportation?
