With an urgent deadline approaching Wednesday, the three California public higher education systems have put their collective strength in the legal fight to prevent federal immigration authorities from prohibiting international students from the US If only They take online courses this fall.
Two separate lawsuits by the University of California and the Atty state. General Xavier Becerra of California State University and the California Community Colleges has put the nation’s leading public research university and the two largest public higher education systems behind the effort to stop federal order. Combined, they educate almost 3 million students.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service issued a directive on July 6 requiring international students who only take online classes to leave the country and prohibits visas from being issued to new students with similar course hours in line.
Under the new policy, campuses planning fully online instruction this fall must submit a revised in-person course plan for their international students by Wednesday. Those planning a combination of online and in-person classes should do so by August 4. The three California systems, whose campuses plan various fall courses to be all or mostly online, say the deadlines are almost impossible to meet.
MIT and Harvard University have filed other lawsuits, with 180 colleges and universities joining an amicus brief and seven international graduate students at USC, UC Irvine, and UCLA. On Monday, USC and 19 other western colleges and universities filed another lawsuit.
The University of California filed its federal lawsuit Friday night in the Northern District of California arguing that the federal directive would devastate the approximately 37,500 international students studying on UC campuses. The directive would also jeopardize UC research and make instruction difficult, as the majority of teaching assistants are graduate students, many of them from other countries, the lawsuit claimed.
At UC Berkeley, for example, 29% of all graduate students and approximately 50% of all engineering graduate students could be forced to leave the country unless they take classes in person. At UCLA, one of the five graduate students are from other countries.
“ICE’s decision shows callous disregard for the students, who would be forced to return to crowded classrooms, and the faculty, in particular the larger faculty to which COVID-19 represents a greater risk, are consigned to the same fate” , says the lawsuit. “And forcing such a reopening when neither students nor universities have enough time to react or address the additional risks to the health and safety of their communities creates chaos and only increases the risk of the spread of the COVID-19 virus.”
Additionally, the loss of thousands of international students, who pay full tuition, would greatly harm the university’s finances and the ability to use the proceeds for financial aid from Californians, the lawsuit argues.
The second lawsuit, filed by Becerra in the Northern District on Thursday, said the federal directive would bring “immediate and irreparable” injuries to the state and its educational institutions. The 115-campus state college system houses 21,754 international students, and the 23-campus Cal State system had anticipated a fall enrollment of 10,300 students from outside the country.
An ICE spokeswoman declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Both lawsuits argue that the ICE directive was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the Administrative Procedures Law. They allege that officials issued the order abruptly without specific warning or opportunity for public comment and were unable to provide a reasoned explanation or consider the havoc it would create.
Immigration rules generally require that international students cannot take more than one class, or three credits, online to qualify for visas. ICE lifted that rule on March 13, when President Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency, and allowed students to stay even if their classes were fully connected. But the immigration authorities changed course with the new order.
The UC lawsuit states that international students may not be able to continue their education from their home countries due to time zone differences, internet access, and other barriers.
UC students from Syria, Somalia and Yemen, for example, would face an ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis that would make internet access and study “almost impossible.” Those in Ethiopia would be hampered by a current government suspension of internet access. At least one student comes from North Korea, “a country known for repressing its citizens and suppressing the free flow of information,” where education can expose them to personal danger, the lawsuit claims.
“Under all circumstances, the manner and speed with which ICE announced and attempts to implement its new policy would be shocking in a system that defends the rule of law and public opinion on the agency’s rules before they end,” argues the demand. “The fact that the situation occurs in the context of a worsening public health crisis in this country makes it not only illegal, but also cruel and dangerous.”
