The US government will “not give visas to students enrolled in fully online programs in the fall and border guards will not let them enter the country,” Immigration and Customs Police (ICE) said in a press release.
As for students already present in the United States, “they must leave the country or take other measures, such as enrolling in a school with courses in person to maintain their legal status.” Otherwise, they may be “facing eviction,” it added.
The measure concerns F1 (for academic studies) or M1 (for professional training) visas. About 1.2 million people had them in March, the vast majority of them Asian (Chinese, Indian, South Korean), according to official data.
Like the rest of the country, American universities, which account for 5.5% of international students on average and depend heavily on their tuition fees, closed their doors in March and switched to online education in an attempt to stem the pandemic. In the absence of vaccines, some, including the State University of California or the prestigious Harvard University, have announced that they will continue with courses 100% online at the start of the school year, even for students authorized to live on the campus.