US judge blocks Trump administration move to cap stays on student, scholar visas

Washington: A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Trump administration rule that sought to put a cap on stays of foreign students, journalists and exchange visitors, a day before it was to come into effect.

A Massachusetts district judge on Monday ruled that the new policy would probably cause “catastrophic” damage to the US economy and higher-education system, rejecting the government’s claims that it was needed to protect the country.

The Trump administration rule, finalised in July, put a four-year limit on student and exchange visitor visas, and a 240-day limit on journalists’ visas, barring China. Mediapersons from China had a 90-day limit on visas issued to them as per the now-postponed rule.

The rule, which was to come into effect from Tuesday, allowed students and journalists to apply for extensions, but approval was at the discretion of officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with no provision to appeal the denial of extension.

Judge F Dennis Saylor IV has also rejected the government contention that the relief being granted be limited to the plaintiffs and not the entire country.

The preliminary injunction halts the implementation of the new rule while the case is heard in court.

The plaintiffs represent almost 600 public and private institutions. But there are more than 5,000 higher-education institutions in the United States, the judge noted.

Limiting relief to the parties represented would require maintaining parallel regulatory regimes and making repeated and potentially inconsistent determinations of whether a particular student or institution falls within the scope of the order, Saylor ruled.

Several organisations, primarily representing the higher education sector and labour unions, had moved court with a plea to strike down the rule.

Harvard President Alan M Garber had called the rule “odd”, contrasting the four-year cap with the typical length of a PhD program. “A typical PhD program usually takes at least six years, so four years is a bit odd as the cutoff for the visa,” Garber said in July.

But the DHS argued that the limits would help it curb fraud and make it easier to stop people from overstaying their visas.

The judge has also specifically noted the possibility that the now-blocked rule could be abused.

He wrote that “in particular, the obvious likelihood that the visas of foreign journalists who are critical of the government -- more particularly, DHS officials -- will not be renewed.”

“The weakness of the connection between the rule and its purported rationales raises legitimate questions as to whether its real purpose is not to safeguard national security and protect our borders, but to achieve other, undisclosed, goals – such as, for example, asserting greater government control over academic institutions and the press,” the judge in his decision granting the preliminary injunction.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PTI

[email protected]