American colleges' pandemic learning decisions are going to have big consequences for international students.
Colleges are starting to roll out their plans for how they'll reopen in the fall, with some announcing all their classes will be taught fully remote as the COVID-19 threat lingers. But the thousands of students from outside the U.S. who go to those newly remote schools won't be able to stay in the states, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Monday.
To attend college, high school, or any other learning program and live in the U.S. without pursuing citizenship, international students need an F or M visa. But "nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States," ICE said in a Monday press release. Students will have to consider "transferring to a school with in-person instruction," or "must depart the country" despite the pandemic preventing safe travel anywhere in the world, ICE said. If they don't leave or change their plans, they may be deported.
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That decision will likely apply to a big portion of the more than 1 million foreign students who attend colleges in the U.S; More than 5,000 international students attend Harvard University alone, which announced Monday its undergraduate classes were going fully online this fall, for example. Harvard and other schools have offered to let students without good home learning environments return to campus, but considering classes would still be remote no matter where students live, ICE's directive will likely keep international students from even staying in a dorm.
