Universities in the United States reportedly urged international students and staff to return to campus before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. Several higher education institutes in the US reported that international students and staff members are feeling uncertain about their future amid concerns over his plans for mass deportation of immigrants, according to a report by BBC.
US President-elect Trump, during the election campaign, pledged to enact the largest deportation operation in history and even enlist the help of the US military to actualize the operation. The Republican leader, who is set to take office on January 20, attempted to end the Obama-era programme shielding over half a million migrants who came to the US as children from deportation during his first presidency.
“Students are incredibly overwhelmed and stressed out right now as a result of the uncertainty around immigration,” BBC report quoted professor Chloe East of the University of Colorado, Denver as saying.
“A lot of students have concerns about their visas and whether they’ll be allowed to continue their education.”
The University of Massachusetts, on November 5, issued a travel advisory to its international students, faculty and staff, asking them to “strongly consider” returning to campus from winter break before Mr Trump’s inaugural on January 5.
“Given that a new presidential administration can enact new policies on their first day in office (January 20), and based on previous experience with travel bans that were enacted in the first Trump Administration in 2016, the Office of Global Affairs is making this advisory out of an abundance of caution to hopefully prevent any possible travel disruption to members of our international community,” the advisory said.
“We are not able to speculate on what a travel ban will look like if enacted, nor can we speculate on what particular countries or regions of the world may or may not be affected,” it added.
The Wesleyan University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have also reportedly issued travel advisories for international students and staff asking them to consider returning to the US before January 20.
At Yale University, a webinar was reportedly hosted by the Office of International Students and Scholars earlier this month to field concerns from students about potential immigration policy shifts.
During his first week in the White House in 2017, he also signed an executive order banning nationals of several predominantly Muslim nations, as well as North Korea and Venezuela, from visiting the US. He also proposed several limitations on student visas.
An estimated 408,000 undocumented students are enrolled in US higher education, representing about 1.9 per cent of all postsecondary students, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.
Officials in Trump’s incoming administration have reportedly indicated that they will build massive holding facilities for undocumented immigrants on the deportation list. The incoming President’s Border Tsar Tom Homan has even said that the removal of violent criminals and national security threats from the US will take priority under the new administration. Mr Homan has, however, not allayed the concerns of immigrant students.
According to Prof East, “uncertainty” is more in students from Asia, particularly China, in light of US-China relations under Mr Trump.
Talking to BBC, Aoi Maeda, an international student from Japan studying at Earlham College in Indiana, said, “I am planning to graduate in May 2026, but now that the administration is going to be a little bit more dangerous, I’m less hopeful about things going well.”
“[Trump] claims that he is only interested in keeping illegal immigrants out of the country, but he also kind of tries to move the goal post a lot of times…I feel like us international students with a visa might get affected, and it’ll become easier to deport us,” Maeda continued.
