Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students
nytimes.com922 points by S0y 10 months ago
922 points by S0y 10 months ago
Don’t miss this bit. Currently enrolled students are going to need to find a new university.
> In a news release, the Department of Homeland Security sent a stark message to Harvard’s international students: “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”
I don't get how DHS has control over what universities foreign students can attend. Either than can attend school in the US or not. Saying they have to transfer from Harvard to another American university is total abuse of power. Surely there are lawsuits in the works over this.
The F/J exhange visa is tied to a specific sponsor (ie the University) for a very specific goal. There are a lot of restrictions on what you can and can't do. If your visa sponsor has its privilege revoked then presumably you have a choice to transfer to a different institute, if one will take you, or leave the country.
There is a mechanism for that transfer built into the visa, which could be used for example if your professor moved institutions and wanted to re-hire you to fulfil the original goals of your exchange program.
It's unclear if this affects all foreign academic staff, many of whom who would be on the J, or just the F visa.
Edit: apparently all exhange visas.
i'd guess this kind of thing (per-institutional authorization to allow international students) was intended to provide the government a way to revoke that right from "sham" institutions (wonder if Trump University ever had international students?) or ones that otherwise were obviously trying to facilitate students skirting or abusing immigration law.
not that i agree with that anyways (citizenship is stupid, borders are stupid, countries are stupid blah blah blah) but it's pretty clear we're currently dealing with a regime that's willing to use ambiguous regulations in malicious ways (no comment on previous regimes, they're all bad, don't call me a HN Democrat or whatever).
Chesterton's fence is way too relevant, when it comes to the "citizenship is stupid, borders are stupid, countries are stupid blah blah blah" part.
It seems that the amount of fences is growing up exponentially. To the point that we are all corralled. Not so long time ago people could move from country to country relatively freely. Now it is a fucking tragedy
>Not so long time ago people could move from country to country relatively freely
The well-off rich and upper middle-class could move from country to country relatively freely, or immigrants who intended not to look back. Which puts a strong pressure on self-selection on the type of people coming into a country.
That time isn't now, with cheap airfares and the internet, it's much more easier for anyone to come in, often with no intention of integration and bringing their own sectarian politics in. When the time comes, how many of these immigrants do you think will fight for their host country? Especially if said host country make likely come into conflict with their homelands.
>"When the time comes, how many of these immigrants do you think will fight for their host country? Especially if said host country make likely come into conflict with their homelands."
Same arguments were just as valid 100-200 years ago where virtually anyone could move anywhere.
well, it'd be relevant if i was actually discussing the idea of immediately abolishing all borders and countries, which i'm definitely not doing here.
Even in the Pre-Industrial Age, Obvious differences existed between class hierarchy or ethnicities. When an Empire does not specifically identify with one or two ethnicities, most societies have always been wary of foreigners by calling them "Barbarians". Chichimecas, Mongols, Non-Greeks, Non-Han Chinese, etc.
> not that i agree with that anyways (citizenship is stupid, borders are stupid, countries are stupid blah blah blah)
Millions of people worldwide have values that are radically different from yours or mine or >99% of people reading this. Consider, a country like Afghanistan-no doubt there are millions of Afghans who oppose the Taliban and are trapped under the rule of a government whose policies and values they radically oppose - and they are denied any realistic outlet to advocate for change using non-violent means-but, at the same time, there are also millions of Afghans who support the Taliban, who think it is great and its values and laws and policies and actions are all wonderful-do you really want millions of pro-Taliban Afghans to be allowed to move to your country if they want to and can afford to do so, and be allowed to vote in your elections as soon as they turn up? This isn’t saying we should ban immigrants or refugees from Afghanistan, only have some kind of filtering process which excludes those with radically opposed values, such as those who are pro-Taliban - and, so nobody thinks I’m singling out Afghans for special treatment, there are several other countries for which the same concern exists (consider e.g. Iran, North Korea), and such a “filtering process” can be designed to work in a way which treats immigrants/refugees of different nationalities/ethnicities/religions equally. But complete abolition of citizenship and immigration control would leave your country at the mercy of chance in terms of protection against takeover by newcomers with radically different values, and although in the short-run you’d escape that outcome (even if they were all free to come, most of them either don’t want to or can’t afford to), in the long-run the odds that you’d succumb to it only go up. And such a policy is fundamentally unstable, in that it would eventually become the cause of its own demise: once these newcomers with radically different values (whatever those values might be) take over, their new values will cause them to reinstate immigration and citizenship controls, to prevent anyone else doing to them what they did to you.
That’s not to say I agree with what the Trump administration is doing here - I actually sympathise with some conservative criticisms of Harvard, but this isn’t a gentle federal nudge in the right direction, it is attacking Harvard with a legally dubious sledgehammer - but just because an administration abuses immigration laws (something many governments around the world have done many times before) doesn’t change the fact that some degree of legal control of immigration and naturalisation is the right thing to have in principle
The US had no immigration laws for the first 100 years, during which time many of our ancestors came here. The only reason we had any immigration laws to begin with was racism against Chinese people. Now we are making up other excuses for it, based on no evidence whatsoever.
> The US had no immigration laws for the first 100 years,
The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalisation to “free white persons” of “good moral character” - yes, it didn’t technically bar immigration from people who didn’t meet that criterion, but it reduced them to an underclass who were denied citizenship - and this was prior to the 14th Amendment, so there was no constitutional right to birthright citizenship even for their children born in the US.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (still on the books but long dormant until recently revived by Trump) gave the federal government the power to deport citizens of countries at war with the US - effectively banning them from immigrating. The Alien Friends Act of 1798 allowed the President to deport any foreigner based on the President’s subjective determination that they were “dangerous”- however, it expired in 1800 and was not renewed.
In the early years of US independence, there were state laws enabling deportation of immigrants - e.g. in 1794 Massachusetts responded to the “problem” of poor Irish immigrants with a state law authorising their deportation back to Ireland, and several were actually deported under this Act. While nowadays, state-level deportation laws would surely be struck down as intruding into an exclusive federal domain, the lack of broad federal deportation statutes for much of the 18th/19th centuries left open a (since closed) constitutional space in which state-level deportation laws could exist
Even prior to US independence, British law gave the colonial authorities the power to deport people they viewed as undesirable - rarely exercised, but it legally existed - and the main reason they rarely exercised it was they didn’t get many “undesirable” immigrants turning up
Note I’m not defending these laws - judged by today’s standards they were racist and deeply unfair - just pointing out that the “first 100 years” of the US wasn’t as “open borders” as you paint it as having been
And while no doubt historically (and even today) many immigration laws have been racist in their terms, motivation, or implementation - I don’t think the idea of having some restrictions on immigration is inherently racist. Almost every country on earth (even non-Western) nowadays has laws saying people convicted of very serious crimes cannot immigrate without special permission - is it “racist” if Botswana says to someone just released from serving a 20 year prison sentence for terrorism “sorry, we don’t want you”?
Which isn’t at all how PhD programs work. This is a supreme dick move to students are going to be forced to leave with an AbD for no other reason than Trumps ego.
This is going to burn the children of the most powerful families across the world. Monarchies, dictators, owners of international conglomerates, etc all send their kids to Harvard. Destroying their children’s education out of a fit of malice is going to haunt him, and America on top of all the other stuff America is doing to the world.
America first is rapidly becoming America alone.
Here’s a case in point - future queen of Belgium kicked out of college by the president of the United States:
https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5316202-future-queen-...
Considering it’s not 1733, a future Belgian monarch has almost zero power.
You're very wrong if you think harvard accepts children of dictators and monarchies for its graduate programs. It's near impossible to get into those program except if you are a genius (exceptionally high GPA and GRE grades, published valuable scientific papers in prestigious journals). Just check the graduate student's directory to see what I mean.
children of the most powerful families across the world
I doubt that most of those people are reliant on student visas.
The students absolutely are. Up until now the law applies to everyone. Now, their applications were probably rapidly approved unlike many international students. But there’s no carve out for being powerful (yet).
You cannot jump over immigration requirements "just because you're powerful", and the vast majority of them are not US citizens.
They could easily get an E2 entrepreneur visa, and the necessary cash is as little as $300k, most of which can be withdrawn later, so it's effectively a free citizenship as long as you have cash.
E2 visa is not available to everyone. Notably Indian and Chinese citizens are not eligible. And that is a large chunk of international students.
You could probably get round immigration requirements by "gifting" a jet or something
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"That's a fantasy" is just substance-free scoffing, be specific. Ex:
1. "Trump isn't that corrupt."
2. "They'll try, but federal law will successfully interrupt the bribe at some stage."
3. "That hyper-exact event is improbable... but perhaps a slightly different favor or a different way of Trump extracting personal gain."
P.S.: For more context, two days ago Trump's Secretary of Commerce was promoting website to go live this week for selling (personally invented, illegal) "Gold Card" visas. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/business/us-gold-card-investo...
>be specific
Again, again, again ...
I don't have to! Because I didn't bring the argument into the conversation.
Burden of proof [1] should be a required reading before posting on this site.
Even the upcoming "Gold Card" visas you mention, which are indeed the closest thing to this idea, come with some additional requirements that no money in the world can circumvent.
It is a fantasy, whether you all like it or not. Life is not a James Bond movie.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
> Burden of proof [1] should be a required reading before posting on this site.
Ironic, then, that you don't understand it. You've confused "Burden of proof" with "Burden of imagining an argument for someone else who was too lazy to actually make one."
Let's try that out: "If you disagree with me, you are wrong and insane, because of reasons that you will have to find for yourself. Insert evil cackle here."
> Even the upcoming "Gold Card" visas [...] come with some additional requirements that no money in the world can circumvent.
Oh my, look! A golden opportunity for you to show off your honest commitment to (real) Burden of Proof.
Yes, share with us these unnamed "additional requirements" you claim exist. (Hopefully not inside an invisible dragon in your garage.)
Since you assert they are not subject to corrupt presidential whims and waivers, that must mean they are federal statute, in which case linking to them should be a breeze.