An art president Trump excels in... Shooting yourself in the foot
It was a bombshell that no one expected, but very few could have put it past the 45th President of the United States who is desperately trying every trick in the book to stay relevant in the American political process leading up to the November 3 election. After his usual rants and diatribes against Democrats, the leftists, fascists and those who are hell bent on doing away with the cultural ethos of America in his Mount Rushmore speech, Donald Trump has turned his attention to a group of foreign students who have been forced to take online classes because their institutions have shut down on account of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Adding to his recent executive order that put on hold H1B visas until the end of December, the Trump administration is now putting the squeeze on foreign students in the United States — primarily from China and India by giving them a choice: attend classes offline; and if you cannot find alternate institutions, leave the country and go home. To be fair to President Trump, his target is not really foreign students. He is just using this group to force a political point.
For a person who does not still believe that there is something called a coronavirus pandemic, President Trump is actually forcing campuses to re-open in his larger cynical desire to boast of resumption of all round economic activity and hence the rebounding of American economy. And in the process if a few thousand students get infected and die of the virus, who cares?
At the heart of the ongoing online-offline revelation of sorts is a fine reading of the pre-requisites of an F-1 student visa that has rarely made headlines so far — that in order to be a bonafide student, one would have to register for a full time course of study, normally between 12 and 16 credit hours; and a student is allowed to take only one online course of three credit hours. And the situation is worse for students pursuing vocational degrees on M-1 visas—they are not permitted to enroll in any online course. The Trump administration was magnanimous at the start of the virus season to make an exception for spring and summer semesters. But somehow the same logic does not seem to make sense to the White House now; and hence obviously it has politics written all over it.
Even now the Republican administration makes the point that it is not asking foreign students to leave or throwing them out: they can always transfer to any institution that offers them regular classes. It sounds and seems so easy when reality could be that of a nightmare even in a country where students make these changes frequently. The resources that are available to a foreign student are quite meager given what they have to put down to go to America to start with; and to expect them to be dancing around institutions to match the tunes of an administration that does not exactly signify consistency could be traumatic indeed.
The Trump administration’s announcement on the F-1 and M-1 visa holders to the letter of the law could not have come at a worse time in American academics and by extension the economy. It is true that many institutions are switching to the online mode of teaching with some Ivy Leaguers like Harvard saying that their entire academic 2020-21year will be online. But even Harvard that has deep pockets by way of billions in endowment will have to follow federal government rules pertaining to immigration. And the ominous warning that students who fail to leave the country if they are unable to satisfy federal guidelines are subject to deportation proceedings send a chill down the spine.
It does not take a Nobel laureate to figure out the intent; even a person who has brains the size of a pin head can figure it out! In a roundabout way President Trump and his cronies are appealing to their own kind by stressing that those “foreigners” who are likely to take away jobs (at fast food joints perhaps) by signing on to online classes and not attending them will be thrown out of the country! What a way to make a point.
The educated in the Trump crowd know better. Whether the President acknowledges it or not the American economy is taking a beating; more than 20 million are out of a job; billions have been lost in businesses; and the country is worse than it was during the Great Depression. At its peak, foreign students were pumping an estimated US$ 45 billions to the economy accounting for some 4,50,000 jobs besides subsiding to an extent the cost of education. But since 2016-17 the intake in American institutions has been seeing a drop; and this pandemic has only made matters worse. Smaller private institutions which are dependent on foreign student admissions are planning closures or mergers that will invariably impact jobs, teaching and non-teaching.
And now prospective and enrolled students are further adding to the uncertainty: denial of visas and the impending return of those in the United States, both of which add up to loss of tuition fee revenue and add on expenditures only making a grim situation worse. But for an administration that does not mind shooting itself in the foot, the loss of foreign students and talent to America is just another day in the business!
(The writer was a former senior journalist in Washington D.C. covering North America and the United Nations)
