Today, Explained - A million international students in limbo

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

The Trump administration announced it would send a million international students home this week. But Vox’s Nicole Narea says the students are collateral in a bigger political play. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The United States of America is going through a rough patch, right? Three million coronavirus cases, we're adding something like 60,000 a day. There's the police brutality, the white supremacy, the economy, the guy in charge fueling all the fires. And yet, this is still the place to come get your education. If you can study abroad anywhere in the world, you probably want to do it in the United States. This week, President Trump made that a lot tougher too.

His administration announced that foreign students would have to leave the United States if they were doing online-only coursework, which would make sense at any other time. But in a global pandemic, that's an upheaval. Any foreign student who isn't showing up in person to take a class, even if it's because their school has gone totally online, needs to leave. Even if you're at an elite institution like MIT or Harvard. My name is Valeria Mendiola. I am an international student at Harvard University. I am doing a master's in public administration and international development at Harvard Kennedy School, and I am from Mexico City. And where are you right now, Valeria?

I am in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So how'd you decide to go to Harvard? Oh my God, this is the best question that you could ever ask me. So Harvard has been a dream for me since I was 12 years old. I remember telling my dad like, huh, dad, is Harvard real? I saw it in a movie or something. And he was like, yes, it is real. And I told him, okay, one day I will go to Harvard. And he just laughed and he was like... You'll have to work very hard for that.

And so that's what I did. Every single step that I gave in life afterwards was with my mind focused on at some point in my life coming to Harvard, which is what happened about a year ago when I got my acceptance letter. And I just did everything in my power to get the funds and, you know, everything just to be able to be here. In order to get your visa, you need to prove to Harvard that you have almost $90,000 for the year. It's very hard to get scholarships for that sort of, for that amount of money.

So I got a couple of scholarships. I got one from the Mexican government. I got one from the Harvard Foundation in Mexico. But also it was not enough for sure. So I had to get a lot of student loans. I had to borrow a lot of money from family and friends. And to be honest, it was a very stressful situation because there was like a deadline in order to get the money

so that I could apply for the visa. I was not hearing back from my scholarships yet. So I had to beg to people and sell a lot of my things. I sold my car. I sold everything that I had just to be here, basically. Oh, my gosh. Was it worth it? Yeah, I can totally tell you that it was worth it.

It has been amazing. It has been over my expectations, not only because of the academics, but the people are spectacular. The professors, my friends, the experiences, the, you know, the talks that we have with these experts in every single topic that you can ever think of. It's spectacular. Spectacular. So what was it like when you found out this week that after all the work you've put in, in your academics to get to the school, not to mention begging and borrowing and applying for the money to get here, that because of the Trump administration's immigration policies, you might

have to leave Cambridge, have to leave Harvard and do this online from Mexico? So first I was in a state of shock. I admit, I was actually in another call when I got a WhatsApp text from a friend who's doing her PhD at Princeton. And she was like, hey, have you seen this? I was so shocked. I had to hang up my other call. I was with my roommate at that same time. And my phone just blew up with texts from all my friends, all of my WhatsApp groups. We were like, no, this can't be true. Like, this has to be a joke, a very bad joke. Of course, it's a misinterpretation of the law or of the policy. And then we started getting emails from Harvard University as well. And they were equally shocked as we were.

So I think what I can tell you is that my first reaction was of a lot of frustration. Of course, being from Mexico, I mean, I know how the politics of immigration work in the U.S., especially with this administration since 2016 when Donald Trump was running for president. But I never imagined that I would actually be one of the people facing these immigration laws. A few days later, MIT and your school, Harvard, announced they were suing the Trump administration over this decision. Was that reassuring? So I admit that I felt sort of a bit reassured because I know that Harvard just doesn't sue anyone, right? If Harvard chose to sue the U.S. government... They choose their lawsuits carefully. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, okay, so this is a good sign. However, I admit that I'm very concerned

and students in general are very concerned. They're putting all their bets on this decision to sue the U.S. government. Where, I mean, in the meantime, there are many, many other universities which have decided to sort of either join the lawsuit or to also, you know, transition into a hybrid model because they are doing everything in their power to protect their international students. In the case of Harvard, there's still a lot of uncertainty. There is no clarity with respect to whether they're going to decide to

go hybrid or not. And that's still very frustrating. And that still gives us a lot of uncertainty. And what are you doing in the meantime, Valeria? How are you making plans for the next weeks and months and even a year of your life? Okay, so in my specific case, oh my God, it has been just such a roller coaster because since a few weeks ago when we knew that Harvard was going to go online, we had to face a decision of whether we chose a leave of absence for a year or whether we chose to stay, even though I was trying to evaluate my outside options and I had to reject that job because I was trying to push my student loans and I was going to lose some of my scholarships. Then

I rejected that job. And now I'm faced with this other decision, I mean, about whether I'm going to have to either leave if I get kicked out of the country. And then if I leave, you know, I already signed my lease. Many people have already signed student loans, including myself, for next year. So what's going to happen to those loans? What's going to happen to my furniture? I was doing some research on, like, the storage costs of leaving my furniture somewhere. And it's going to cost me, like, around $1,500 for the year, which, of course, I don't have. I don't really have that money to spare.

And then, you know, like I'm trying to think, okay, if I go back to Mexico, my parents are a high risk population. My mom had cancer some years ago and my dad is also high risk because of health issues. So like, I'm not sure that I can just go back to live at their place. Would I have to get another apartment in Mexico, like in the middle of a pandemic? Or how is that going to work? You know, also internet connectivity is not the best in Mexico. And I cannot even imagine how it is in other places in the world. So, you know, like there's so many, there are so many decisions right now that I feel like I have to make very fast. And I think that's also very, very stressful because like the amount of time that we have to decide or to plan is very little. Yeah. I just imagine in your case,

especially this wasn't like, oh, I want to go to a good school. Mom, dad, buy me into an American university so I can, you know, have that American college experience. This, like your whole life was designed to get into what very well may be the greatest university in the world. You just feel like collateral right now in this other mess that we're in. Has this experience changed how you feel about the United States? So I am a true believer that the United States is not determined by its politicians, but by its people in general. I have been very lucky in the sense that I have met amazing Americans

here in Cambridge, but also, you know, like out of all the times that I have visited the U.S. before as a tourist, I know that the U.S. is way better than what the Trump administration is trying to implement. And we can see it like everywhere, even, you know, in my program, even though 85% of the students are international students, the other 15 percent who are Americans are being very supportive. They're telling us like, guys, I'm so sorry. Let me know how I can help. And I think that's what America is all about, you know, helping others and helping each other, actually, and trying to learn from each other. And I think the reason why I came here is because I want to

learn the best practices. I want to learn from the best professors and from the best university in the world so that at some point I can just go back to my country and then implement everything that I have been learning here to make the world a better place. And I think that's what most of us are trying to do. Yeah. Well, Valeria, I really hope it works out for you and you get to stay. Yeah, me too.

Thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it. No, thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you. and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. Thank you. R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Nicole Nerea, you cover immigration for Vox. How important are international students like Valeria to American universities?

So international students bring not only their intellect, but also their dollars to U.S. universities. They generate an estimated $45 billion for the U.S. economy annually. $45 billion? Yeah, yeah, $45 billion for the U.S. economy annually. $45 billion? Yeah, yeah, $45 billion. It's a huge amount, and they tend to pay tuition at a higher rate than domestic students as well, and they also support more than 450,000 jobs. So they really are a big financial force in the U.S. university system, and without them, some academic programs would definitely suffer.

And this isn't just schools like Harvard or MIT, right? This is state schools, public schools, where international students pay foreign tuition, which is oftentimes way, way higher than what local state students are expected to pay. Yeah, absolutely. There are certain schools where there's a higher percentage of foreign students, but across the board, they really are providing some financial stability to these institutions and in a way subsidizing the education of Americans. Valeria, obviously from Mexico, but there's like a million of these international students in the United States. Where are most of them from? Most of them are coming from China and India in particular, but some other big sending countries are South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam. So how did the Trump administration decide to kick all these people out?

So when the pandemic hit back in March, a lot of colleges opted to go online and hold classes only online. And while some international students decided to stay in the States to do that, a lot of them went home to finish their course of study. But the administration said that, in this case, students on temporary F-1 and M-1 visas could stay in the U.S. or near campus to do that. And many of them live in off-campus apartments, so that was feasible for them. But I guess the big question has been what's going to happen in the fall for the curriculum of many universities. Will they all be online? This week, Harvard announced that they would put the full

2020 to 2021 school year online. And right after that, the Trump administration said that students need to be taking now at least one class in person in order to stay in the country. That's still more lenient than the policy that existed before the pandemic, but it really does hamper schools' efforts to keep students, staff, and other members of the community safe and prevent these institutions from becoming super spreaders, because many of them were going to opt to be fully online. What's the Trump administration's defense for this plan to send all these students home? How are they explaining it?

So the Trump administration did have a policy before the pandemic of prohibiting foreign students from taking online only course loads. Obviously, they suspended that for the duration of the pandemic. But Trump is also trying to get colleges to reopen in the fall and public schools in general. And the acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, has actually said, This is now setting the rules for one semester, which will finalize later this month, that will again encourage schools to reopen. They've pretty directly tied this new policy change to a political goal here.

And, you know, while there may be good arguments for reopening, say, elementary schools, the risks of doing that are totally different from those associated with the risks of reopening universities. And it seems like he is in some ways trying to equate the two. So you're saying that this isn't so much about President Trump wanting to get rid of international students and send them home, though one could easily mistake this for that. This is more about forcing universities' hands to reopen schools? Yeah, absolutely. And he realizes the political stakes of that, certainly. I know Harvard and MIT are suing the Trump administration to block this decision, but how are other schools across the country responding?

So a bunch of schools have joined Harvard and MIT's lawsuit, Princeton and Stanford included, but there have also been other lawsuits filed in other federal courts across the country. The University of California has also said it's going to file its own suit. The state of California is suing. But, you know, there does seem to be a different response to this depending on the school. Certain state schools, for instance, might be more keen to reopen for in-person classes because the risks associated with doing that is just inherently lower. Because, for example, many students may live at home, some may have jobs, and the campus isn't just as much of a center of social interaction that could lead these institutions to become super spreaders. So we've already seen about 65% of

most universities reporting that they plan to reopen in person. So this is really just affecting those 45% that haven't said so yet. What are the universities that, you know, will be hit hard by this doing other than suing the administration? Some schools that were planning to go online or mostly online have said that they are going to try to offer at least one in-person class to international students just so that they can stay in the country. But the community on these campuses is also stepping in to try to protect their fellow international students. Professors are offering in-person independent studies on an individual basis to students that are affected, and students in the U.S. are giving up their spots in in-person classes to international students. So we really are seeing a kind of rallying around the international student community on these campuses. There's like a grassroots movement to protect these students from being

deported? Yeah, absolutely. And I think the value to the university community goes beyond just sort of the dollars that these students bring in. And we're seeing that play out in the way that professors and students are reacting. Do we know if these lawsuits stand a chance to stop this from happening? I mean, do these schools have a good case? ICE is sort of likely to argue here that they have a lot of discretion in this situation. The hope from immigration attorneys is that this litigation will at least delay the implementation of this new guidance until the worst of the pandemic is passed and schools will reopen for in-person classes anyway. That's the long-term objective of these places. But we should

know more by next Wednesday, July 15th, when the judge in the Harvard and MIT case is supposed to issue a ruling. What does this mean for international students broadly? I mean, I asked Valeria how she feels about the United States after all this, but I wonder, more broadly speaking, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if this is becoming a heck of a lot less of in enrollment from foreign students since Trump was selected. So these policies do have an impact in terms of the United States attractiveness as a destination for these students. And for those who did choose to come here in the first place, the idea of home just got a lot more complicated? Yeah, so some of them are still stranded abroad due to the pandemic-related travel bans that are still in effect. I talked to one student in Sweden who wouldn't be able to come back for the fall semester just because she would have to go through another country that isn't facing a U.S.-imposed travel ban, stay there for two weeks,

and then fly from there to the U.S. so she could be let in. And all that's prohibitively expensive. And others can't even go home at all. You know, there's students from Venezuela, for example, who can't go back to their home country because it's in the middle of a humanitarian and political crisis. So there are a lot of challenges that any one international student could be facing. And for many of them, it's impractical, if not impossible, to go home. You can find Nicole Norea's reporting on this story at Vox.com. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. This is Today Explained.

It's a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Liz Nelson is the editorial director of Vox Podcasts. The Today Explained team includes Amina Alsadi, Muj Zaydi, Jillian Weinberger, Bridget McCarthy, Halima Shah, Afim Shapiro, and Noam Hassenfeld, who dabbles in music. The mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder's entire life is music, We had a whole lot of help this week from Paul Mounsey. Let's give him a round of applause. Thank you.