Statement Opposing Xenophobic Visa Regulations Imposed on International Students and Scholars
In July 2020, the Executive Council approved the following statement.
The MLA unequivocally opposes as cruel and coercive the recent modifications of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) issued by the United States State Department and ICE on 6 July 2020. The new regulation states that the United States will not issue visas for international students if courses at their institution are “fully online” in the fall of 2020 and that international students currently here on F-1 or M-1 student visas in such programs will need to leave the United States voluntarily or be deported. F-1 students will be protected by current federal regulations, but they may take no more than one class online during the semester, except in cases where a “hybrid” model has been instituted by their institution, and even in those cases, all of a student’s classes cannot be online. If an institution changes instruction to be online during the semester, students will lose their exemption. In effect, international students who are enrolled in classes conducted fully online in the fall of 2020 will be forced to leave the country or transfer to institutions that comply with this objectionable requirement.
The recently announced changes imperil the educational trajectories of international students and students on F-1 and M-1 visas and put at risk the academic departments, including those in language and literature, that teach and train students from abroad in their degree programs. Under this regulation, students have no control over their immediate future even when they have entered the country lawfully and when they have gone through the considerable stress of obtaining a United States visa, which often occurs at great personal expense.
Read the text of the 6 July 2020 regulation.
The two aims of this deeply objectionable regulation seem to be (1) to chase international students out of academic institutions in the United States with the threat of visa revocation and (2) to pressure universities to conduct in-person teaching regardless of whether or not reopening the university assists the spread of the coronavirus and regardless of the harm done to the health of all members of the university community. Once again, those whose lives are most clearly imperiled by practices that spike the virus are the Black and brown members of educational communities. The regulation plunges international students into a most precarious position, fearing revocation and intensifying surveillance of their coursework. It threatens to disrupt and destroy educational programs that attract international students for study, research, and teaching in language and literature. Such a climate of precarity and fear will undermine for a long time the capacity of the United States to continue the decades-long tradition of fostering a vibrant international academic community.
This most recent regulation communicates that foreign students who rely on visas have no secure place in institutions of higher learning in the United States, and it thus works in tandem with another xenophobic initiative, the most recent presidential proclamation to freeze the processing of all work visas for high-skilled workers (H-1B) and for many exchange students and scholars (J) through the end of this year. Read the text of the 22 June 2020 proclamation.
Taken together, these new mandates will have a devastating effect on academic hiring, retention, graduate student admission, and global scholarly exchange. Although scholars already residing in the United States with an F-1 and J visa, or returning to the country, will be allowed to remain, those recently hired to faculty or postdoctoral positions will not be processed until after 1 January 2021 at the earliest. In some cases, this means forfeiting a position for which one was hired. Institutions will likely forfeit the position at least for the academic year in question, and this will undermine the strength of academic departments and institutions and weaken the United States’ standing in the world.
Although we are relieved to see that programs offering optional practical training for international scholars with recent PhDs will not be affected, we must still underscore the disruption and devastation these new rules will pose for international scholars and students who have accepted graduate school admission and academic positions but whose visa applications are suspended in the middle of the process or are threatened with revocation once they arrive. However, the continuation of the suspension of green cards for foreign scholars and researchers jeopardizes the legal status of those engaged in practical training within the United States and their ability to sustain a long-term position here. The presidential order explicitly seeks to preserve jobs in the United States for Americans, but it disregards the fact that international scholars and students are indispensable for the survival of units involved in teaching and research in foreign languages and literatures, and it underestimates how international collaboration enhances knowledge and global understanding. Among the programs hardest hit will be foreign language and literature departments, but all international students and scholars whose livelihood depends on visas and green cards will suffer. Programs such as international studies and political science, business, and archaeology, as well as many other fields with a strong international focus, depend on institutions’ ability to train scholars in foreign languages and cultures. The overall excellence of research in the United States suffers when international scholars of language and literature are denied access to our colleges and universities.
The two regulations taken together constitute a coordinated xenophobic attack on educational institutions in the United States and their ability to maintain their standing in the world. We call upon members of Congress to take action to nullify these extreme measures, which undermine the international commitments of higher education, as well as those programs most enriched by the participation of international scholars.
The mandate operative here to reopen the economy at a quick pace works in tandem with a xenophobic imperative. The economy will be reopened for United States citizens only, and if it takes the lives of the most vulnerable among us, then the government shrugs its shoulders and refuses accountability. We urge professional associations, universities, and programs that benefit from and depend on international students and exchange to call upon the State Department to revoke its callous regulation and to provide the legal conditions for invaluable international students and scholars to remain full and welcome members of academic communities in the United States.