2.44%<\/a>, according to the DHS. One commenter on the rule noted that a rate under 5% isn\u2019t even considered statistically significant under standard accounting principles.<\/p>\nA 2.44% overstay rate isn\u2019t a crisis. It\u2019s proof that the old system was already working.<\/p>\n
Duration of status was a practical solution to many students needing more than four years to complete their degree, said Hiroshi Motomura, a professor of immigration law.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t doubt this is true for any system \u2013 that there are people who are abusing the visa,\u201d Motomura said. \u201cYou\u2019re making the whole system not function because you\u2019re afraid of what\u2019s going on at the edges.\u201d<\/p>\n
A handful of those cases on the edges doesn\u2019t justify rebuilding an entire system. By treating a fringe issue as if it were systemic, the proposed policy punishes the vast majority of students who were never the problem in the first place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government has our I-20, has a SEVIS, they have our I-9. They\u2019re monitoring us 24\/7, and we really do feel that,\u201d said a third-year international student who was granted anonymity for fear of retaliation from the federal government. She added she feels it is unfair to be expected to continue operating under this additional level of scrutiny.<\/p>\n
For students who were already doing everything right, the rule change would bring unnecessary risk.<\/p>\n
Charbel Chehade, the Undergraduate Students Association Council international student representative, said studying in the U.S. is already expensive, and many students cannot afford to spend additional time.<\/p>\n
Even choices like studying abroad or visiting home carry new risks. Students already in the country under duration of status would be affected by the new rule if they were to leave and re-enter, at which point their flexible timeline would be replaced with a fixed, four-year cap.<\/p>\n
And the stakes go beyond any one student\u2019s anxiety \u2013 they impact the U.S. as a whole. International students don\u2019t just study here, they also enter the workforce, Motomura noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people cannot do something with a degree, they may not come here in the first place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Much of what makes the U.S. influential abroad is built on the people who came here to study. The American higher education system, and the opportunities it affords, is what continues to send talent and innovation our way. That influence could erode slowly, one deterred student at a time.<\/p>\n
Additional oversight of student visas isn\u2019t unreasonable. Getting rid of a program that\u2019s worked for nearly 50 years is.<\/p>\n
Replacing duration of status with a rigid deadline doesn\u2019t fix a broken system \u2013 it breaks a working one. And students who did nothing wrong will be caught in the fallout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"International students have been able to stay in the United States as long as it takes to finish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-865401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}