ISSUES

Trump And Miller Left Biden With Unfinished Immigration Business


First, processing delays in Optional Practical Training (OPT) have bedeviled international students, particularly at the Texas Service Center Lockbox. Without a receipt, students can lose their status. (Attorneys have reported some improvements.) The Biden administration disbanded a last-minute effort by the Trump administration to establish a new unit to go after international students working on OPT, which may facilitate more targeted enforcement against bad actors, rather than a generalized effort against all students working on OPT.

Second, the Trump administration’s student policies left in place from 2020 may need to be adapted to the current situation. “After a concerted advocacy effort by the higher education community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that international students should ’continue to abide’ by emergency pandemic guidance that allows them to take all or some of their courses online,” according to a letter from the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “We strongly support this guidance because without it, a large number of international students still in the United States during the pandemic would have had to take classes in person or leave–neither tenable as COVID cases rise and the pandemic is still prevalent.

Read the full article from Forbes here.