[eiji]

I doubt this decision is coming from the WH. It's a very simple calculation made by an agency with different priorities from what might be represented here in this forum.

You have thousands of foreigners, a large portion of which might not be in the country, waiting to return to the US to continue their studies. Many of those countries don't even allow US travelers to arrive at this time. Everybody is urging for caution, but that there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals preparing to arrive back here, with possible infections, is something an agency might be concerned about. So naturally, why not prevent this travel from happening in the first place with a policy like that?

Of course it's a heavy handed approach, but so are the lock-downs and closed schools. So we go to great length trying to prevent the spread, we close schools for over 4 month, and some don't even want schools open in the fall, but somehow an influx of half a million students is something nobody should be concerned about?

Those are valid discussions to be had. Assuming right away that this is a way to force universities to open is not a very genuine way of thinking. You cannot encourage full online classes for health reasons, and applaud that on Monday, and on Tuesday complain we don't allow students from all over the world to return just to sit in front of a computer.

Everybody is laser focused on these case numbers, and some states will close schools due to high case counts in the fall, impacting millions of families. If you support that, you should probably also support any measures possible to keep case counts low, including discouraging international travel.

[aaomidi]

> 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.

Seems like someone didn't read the OP.

[eiji]

I read that. And again, this is a policy. You are not thinking this through, in my opinion.

Think about this in a way an accountable official would think.

Most universities don't know what they will do yet in the fall. If you make an exemption for people who are currently already in the country, what would that solve? It would artificially pick those students over those who happened to travel home for the summer. You can't do that. That would probably make such a rule unlawful. So you have to craft such a "heavy handed" rule in such a way that it doesn't have loop holes that can be exploited. Don't think lawyers didn't review this exemption for weeks.

And my earlier points still stand.

I'm not trying to convince people that this rule is all that good. But understand where it comes from, and don't think it's all because of a particular administration. There is certainly logic to this rule. You may not agree with it, but I might not agree with closed schools either.

[aaomidi]

> Think about this in a way an accountable official would think.

No they wouldn't. I've held various (small scale) public facing offices before and this isn't how I would think.

Thinking of the consequences of your actions is a very important thing.

> If you make an exemption for people who are currently already in the country, what would that solve?

Decrease the damage done?

> So you have to craft such a "heavy handed" rule in such a way that it doesn't have loop holes that can be exploited. Don't think lawyers didn't review this exemption for weeks.

They probably didn't. We've seen this administration do bullshit orders before. This isn't a new one. Remember when they banned green card holders from coming to the US and there was chaos for 12-24 hours until they came and said whoops those are exempted?

> And my earlier points still stand.

Your wrong points do stand, yes.

> But understand where it comes from

I do. It's bullshit.

[eiji]

You are not addressing any of my points with any substance. But you have to resort to cursing twice.

[bdhe]

The reason the other commentator thinks your post is bullshit because it doesn't address the clause in the order that requires F-1 students currently already in the country to leave if classes are online-only. This order is not done by some agency being thoughtful about covid19, it's about using the pandemic to put out more xenophobia that the WH will more than approve.

[aaomidi]

Thank you. I just didn't see a point in discussing this further.

Isolationism and enforcing an extra set of standards on __others__ is always disgusting to me. Especially when we've been failing at every step of the way of this pandemic.

[eiji]

But I am addressing it. You cannot make circumstancial exemptions like "if you are currently in the country" to a merit based visa. That way the whole thing can be struck down in court.

And again, we are negatively impacting the entire population with very draconian rules and lock downs. Heavy handedness all around. But somehow none essential foreign influx is just fine? They can come if they have to, clearly.

People are really measuring all this by two standards. If you think it's okay for citizens to be impacted by necessary lock downs, parents not working due to young children staying home, but foreign students are cozy in their home office?