Federal Judge Blocks Trump Rule Limiting Stays for Foreign Students and Journalists
By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Sept. 14 (Reuters) — A federal judge in Boston on Monday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a new Department of Homeland Security rule that would have limited how long foreign students, exchange visitors and journalists could remain in the United States without applying for extensions.
U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor ruled in favor of a coalition of labor unions and higher education advocacy groups, one day before the DHS rule was set to take effect.
Saylor said DHS adopted the policy based on “exceptionally weak” rationales. The agency had cited national security and the need to prevent fraud in the visa program, but the judge found it had not met its legal obligations to address concerns about the policy change or to consider less burdensome alternatives.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The judge, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, wrote that the rule would upend a system under which the United States had issued visas to foreign students for nearly five decades on a “duration of status” basis. That system, he said, has allowed tens of millions of international students and researchers to come to the country, contributing to “groundbreaking research in science, medicine, and technology, substantial economic growth, and a host of other benefits, often on a vast scale.”
Saylor said the rule DHS adopted in July sought to replace that system with one that would sharply restrict the overall number of foreign students, professors and journalists in the United States.
Under the policy, F visas for international students and J visas for cultural exchange participants who work in the U.S. would have been capped at four years. I visas for journalists, which can currently last for years, would have been limited to 240 days.
About 1.6 million people hold F visas and another 500,000 hold J visas. Major research universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University enroll large percentages of foreign students, especially at the graduate level, the judge noted.
If the rule had gone into effect, those universities would likely have faced hundreds of millions of dollars in costs and declining enrollment, Saylor said.
“The damage to the higher education system and to the economy of the United States is likely to be catastrophic,” he wrote.
The decision is a setback for the administration’s broader effort to tighten legal immigration and visa rules, which has drawn opposition from universities, research institutions and business groups that depend on international students and scholars.
Miriam Feldblum, who leads one of the plaintiff groups, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, said the ruling recognized the harm the rule would inflict on international students, universities and the broader economy.
“While the case continues, this relief preserves the longstanding system that enables our colleges and universities — and our country — to attract, educate, and retain global talent,” Feldblum said.
The ruling is preliminary and does not resolve the lawsuit. It keeps the duration-of-status system in place while the legal challenge proceeds.
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio and Rosalba O’Brien.