Facing fierce opposition, the US Department of Homeland Security Tuesday announced that it has withdrawn visa guidelines that barred international students from the US if all of their classes were to be conducted online this fall.
The surprise announcement came during a federal district court hearing Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by Harvard University and MIT seeking a temporary injunction of the guidelines.
The decision means that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s decision in March to allow international students to continue their studies remotely without impacting their visa status due to the coronavirus remains in place. It is unclear what this means, however, to students whose visas are expiring and to new students who are applying for visas and whose classes may be entirely online.
The scheduled court hearing lasted less than five minutes. The US government announced that it would rescind the directive announced last week on international students, which has caused confusion and spurred Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and other attorneys general across the country to file their own lawsuits.
Harvard and MIT on Tuesday were expected to argue that the federal government would harm tens of thousands of students, universities nationwide, the US economy and public health, if it carried out its plan to bar many international students from studying in the United States.
In a high-stakes court hearing that could have determined the fate of many international students studying in the US this fall, Harvard and MIT intended to urge US district court Judge Allison D. Burroughs to issue a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order preventing the Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement from applying their new visa rules, which bar foreign students from studying in the US if all of their classes will be conducted online.
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