by Joel Lev-Tov

The Trump administration proposed a fixed term for international student visas on Sept. 25, a move that has continued to draw criticism from Maryland politicians, school administrators and students. 

The proposed rule change would affect international students on F-1 and J-1 visas, including those at the University of Maryland. Currently, those visas allow international students to stay in the country as long as they are enrolled at a university, referred to as duration of status. If adopted, the rule would replace it with a fixed two-year or four-year time period. It comes during the lame-duck period of an administration bent on revising immigation law to be more restrictive.

The University of Maryland, other universities across the country and other concerned citizens submitted more than 32,000 comments on the ruling and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is now required to review them and take them into consideration. 

The rule has been a long time coming, said Susan-Ellis Dougherty, the director of UMD’s International Students and Scholar Services. The Trump administration has had the duration of status provision on its legislative agenda since the beginning, she said, but it kept getting delayed. When it finally did show up on the Federal Register it was a “disappointment,” Dougherty said. 

The Department of Homeland Security countered that this rule is necessary to ensure the United States’ s security.

“Amending the relevant regulations is critical in improving program oversight mechanisms; preventing foreign adversaries from exploiting the country’s education environment; and properly enforcing and strengthening U.S. immigration laws,” wrote Ken Cuccinelli, the senior official performing the duties of the deputy secretary in USCIS, said in a press release. 

USCIS further said in its executive summary that a rise in F visa applications, used for international students and their family members, “poses a challenge to the Department’s ability to monitor and oversee these categories of nonimmigrants while they are in the United States” because students and their relatives on F visas do not interact much with the agency.

The rule would restrict international students to a two-year visa if more than 10% of people from their home country overstay their visas. 

Sixty-one percent of those countries are on the African continent. The rest are in Central and Latin America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and two Pacific islands.

“It seems disingenuous of the United States to just state that all people from these countries will now need to be limited rather than deal with the individual case,” Dougherty said. “I would be much more comfortable with us maintaining what was already a valid visa process.”

In practice, the biggest difference for international students will be who adjudicates requests for extensions, Dougherty said. Under the duration of status rule, international students’ advisors consider requests for extensions that have “compelling academic reasons.”  

If the rule goes into effect an immigation officer would judge a student’s claim, not the student’s advisor. It allows students to apply for renewal if their academic program goes beyond the time granted, for a “compelling academic reason,” illness, or “circumstances beyond the student’s control.” 

“That officer who has never met the student and isn’t aware of this program’s requirements now has a say in whether or not a student has met that compelling academic reason,” Doherty said. “Nothing is arbitrary about [duration of status]. We work with the government’s regulations. And then we have to work with university academic policy to make these determinations in the office about those extensions, and so we’re working with that structure in order to help the student get their extension.”

Yunheng Han, an international graduate student, said the rule would put unnecessary burdens on international students.

“Such application and admission processes bring uncertainty and may result in opposite effects. I will leave the United States after I complete my study, but the new rule will prolong my stay to more than my planned time because I need to apply for an extension after four years which could take a long time,” Han wrote in a public comment.

Han did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

Marco Verzocchi was an international student himself and now works with them at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. 

“When I was a postdoctoral researcher I felt I had a sword over my future which was called visa. When I first came to the US I never thought that I was going to remain here and become a citizen. Still, it was very stressful to go through the visa process multiple times (roughly every 18 months),” he wrote in a public comment. “I have been in the US for almost 20 years, and I must have interacted with well over a thousand students and postdoctoral researchers who came to the US with a valid visa. I do not know of a single one that decided to stay in the US illegally.”

Verzocchi declined a request for an interview.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

The National Association of International Educators said in a study frequently cited by opponents of the rule change that the contribution of international students to the U.S. totaled nearly $441 billion and created over 458,00 jobs during the 2018-2019 school year. 

But Amy Rivera, the president of UMD’s Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society chapter, said in a previous interview that the Latinx community was taken aback at the amount of support from UMD’s administration for international students. 

For example, the administration joined a lawsuit against an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement directive in July that would have required international students to take in-person classes in order to stay in the country. 

“It is a little bit of elitism in the sense that often some international students tend to be a little bit more economically privileged than undocumented students,” she said. “And so there’s the question of how come the university was very open with their support instantly to the international students, but it’s kind of been a crying for undocumented students?”

If the regulation does get approved, the incoming Biden administration may choose to reverse it. It would go through a similar process to this rule, opening a 30-day comment period. 

“2021 is on the horizon,” Dougherty said. “And I am looking forward for some positive changes for international students in the coming year.”