[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.

[bdhe]

True. You'll see later that the commenter simultaneously holds the view that covid is overblown but also that we need to move heaven and earth to save schoolchildren, while I bet they're in full support of Trump's asinine "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN!" tweet.

[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?

[bdhe]

You're being disingenuous. They already had an exception through Spring and Summer 2020. No one batted an eyelid. They're removing the exception they had to a stricter by-the-book enforcement for no particular reason except to use the opportunity to kick out more foreigners. I see that as a plainly xenophobic motivation.

> 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?

I think this phrasing is completely devoid of empathy. Students in a foreign country typically having taken big loans and paying through their teeth are in a much more vulnerable position than citizens. There's no reason to compare one set of circumstances with another.

At the end, universities will be forced to offer some portion of their courses as in-person which will only make the pandemic worse. Do you think these measures are making the country safer if that happens?

[eiji]

> I see that as a plainly xenophobic motivation.

Why is that? The pandemic drags on. Half of the country remains under severe restrictions. Schools and summer camps are still mostly none-existent. Why would a country continue with exemptions when similar privileges are not granted by many originating countries?

> Students ... paying through their teeth ...

Do you have any sources for those students typically paying through their teeth?

While other countries close their borders to visa holders due to the pandemic, we don't do that in most cases. Only if your particular institution doesn't need you to be here. This rule is not void of fairness. It's compromising a difficult situation.

I'm not naïve about the bigger picture, which certainly doesn't make this any easier. We have a gravy train setup for higher education, with students paying full tuition, often displacing the local population. We have higher ed with signaling power to schools across the country. We have political disagreements with the biggest origin country. And we have a pandemic.

If there is just one student saved from coming here, that would've caused an elementary school to go into a month long covid19 shutdown in September, then this by-the-book enforcement is worth it to me. I would never assume a University would adjust their attendance plans for a semester just for foreign students alone. That wouldn't be very rational, or would it be?

* https://www.statista.com/statistics/233880/international-stu...

* https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...

[bdhe]

I don't understand why responses of other countries weigh into the US's response. There are good reasons to have restrictions, there's no good reason not to continue to relax their strict interpretation.

> Do you have any sources for those students typically paying through their teeth?

Not at the moment. I encourage you to read up on where funding for US universities typically comes from. I also would encourage you to try to be empathetic towards an immigrant student in this country.

> We have a gravy train setup for higher education, with students paying full tuition, often displacing the local population.

This is conveniently `othering` framing. Displacing the local population? The ones whose jobs and livelihoods depend entirely on the college towns economy? I'm afraid you're picking and choosing facts and painting a narrative that either assuages your discomfort with what's happening, or worse, betrays a complete lack of empathy.

> If there is just one student saved from coming here, that would've caused an elementary school to go into a month long covid19 shutdown in September, then this by-the-book enforcement is worth it to me. I would never assume a University would adjust their attendance plans for a semester just for foreign students alone. That wouldn't be very rational, or would it be?

I'm sorry, it's hard to engage with this sort of reductive black and white thinking while the same administration still doesn't have a national mask mandate and is still planning to have the RNC convention in a place like Florida. Occam's razor suggests that the simpler explanation, far more consistent with the administration's past actions on DACA, asylum seekers, and recently, skilled immigrant workers -- xenophobia. You really have to cherry pick a convoluted narrative to avoid seeing this.

I think you're being nakedly disingenuous considering your past comments such as this:

> For 2.5 month now we are always two weeks away from a catastrophe with mass graves and hospital parking lots full of dead people. And then two weeks pass and nothing really happens. Reality just doesn't seem to square up with the fearmongering.

And now, even if one person might have caused a chain event you want to shut out potentially close to a million kids looking to educate themselves?