Dear Unnamed,
Greetings from a snowy and cold Washington, D.C. where we are experiencing our first snowfall of the season. I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving if that is part of your family tradition. Our Thanksgiving respite here in D.C. was shaken by the tragic shooting of two National Guardsmen by an Afghan national—prompting the government to pause processing of green card and citizenship applications filed by people from the 19 countries currently affected by a travel ban. Note that this pause does not apply to F-1 student visa applications, though it certainly could affect former international students who are now going through the green card process.
USCIS has also cited the shooting as rationale for reducing the work authorization validity period for many types of applicants, to allow for more regular vetting. This change will greatly increase USCIS’ work authorization workload and will no doubt affect F-1 students who pursue Optional Practical Training (OPT) next year.
The Department of State, meanwhile, announced on December 3, that it will expand enhanced social media vetting to H-1B and H-4 nonimmigrants, instructing applicants to “adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to public.” More information is on NAFSA’s website.
The current administration’s continued actions against international students drew the sharp rebuke of a group of former senior-level State Department officials and ambassadors in a November 17 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The letter calls out the administration’s actions targeting international students’ free speech and other expressions—frequently without due process—saying: “The United States is giving up its position as a magnet for the best and brightest and as a center for robust discourse and learning, and the consequences are concrete: foreign students are pursuing their education in other countries.” The authors urge Secretary Rubio to honor the legacy of the agency by “halting the targeting of foreign students and faculty, including under the guise of foreign policy. By doing so, you can reverse the damage to our peerless colleges and universities and to our country and restore America’s role as a global leader on democracy and free speech—values upon which we can all agree.”
In addition to the foreign policy arguments in favor of welcoming international students, new data from NAFSA and JB International (summarized in my last issue) makes a clear economic argument as well. This recent piece in Forbes, How U.S. Visa Policies are Crippling Colleges and Ceding Global Leadership, does a good job of connecting the dots, while this story lays out the clear evidence that international students are shifting away from North America, as shown by the results of the Global Enrolment Benchmark Survey that NAFSA produced with Studyportals and Oxford Test of English.
Recall that we have identified key policy solutions to reverse declining trends, including preserving Duration of Status and protecting OPT—which the current USCIS Director has threatened to restrict or abolish. See below for an easy way to share this data and the policy solutions with your members of Congress.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Thank you kindly.
Best,
Erica
Erica Stewart
Senior Director, Advocacy & Strategic Communications
NAFSA: Association of International Educators
