--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Fall is here. Might be time to find some nice new pieces you can wear again and again. With Saks Fifth Avenue, it can be a breeze to shop for your personal style, like maybe a relaxed Prada blazer or Gucci loafers that are great for both work and the weekend.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The United States of America is going through a rough patch, right? 3 million coronavirus cases, we're adding something like 60,000 a day. There's the police brutality, the white supremacy, the economy, the guy in charge fueling all the fires. And yet, this is still the place to come get your education.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you can study abroad anywhere in the world, you probably want to do it in the United States. This week, President Trump made that a lot tougher too. His administration announced that foreign students would have to leave the United States if they were doing online-only coursework, which would make sense at any other time, but in a global pandemic, that's an upheaval.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Any foreign student who isn't showing up in person to take a class, even if it's because their school has gone totally online, needs to leave. Even if you're at an elite institution like MIT or Harvard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Valeria Mendiola. I am an international student at Harvard University. I am doing a master's in public administration and International Development at Harvard Kennedy School, and I am from Mexico City.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And where are you right now, Valeria?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: I am in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how'd you decide to go to Harvard?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Oh my God, this is the best question that you could ever ask me. So Harvard has been a dream for me since I was 12 years old. I remember telling my dad like, huh, dad, is Harvard real? I saw it in a movie or something, and he was like, yes, it is real.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And I told him, OK, one day I will go to Harvard. And he just laughed and he was like, you'll have to work very hard for that. And so that's what I did.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Every single step that I gave in life afterwards was with my mind focused on at some point in my life coming to Harvard, which is what happened about a year ago when I got my acceptance letter.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And I just did everything in my power to get the funds and, you know, everything just to be able to be here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In order to get your visa, you need to prove to Harvard that you have almost $90,000 for the year. It's very hard to get scholarships for that amount of money.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So I got a couple of scholarships. I got one from the Mexican government. I got one from the Harvard Foundation in Mexico.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: But also, it was not enough for sure. So I had to get a lot of student loans. I had to borrow a lot of money from family and friends.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And to be honest, it was a very stressful situation because there was like a deadline in order to get the money so that I could apply for the visa.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: I was not hearing back from my scholarships yet. So I had to beg to people and sell a lot of my things. I sold my car. I sold everything that I had just to be here, basically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, my gosh. Was it worth it?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Yeah, I can totally tell you that it was worth it. It has been amazing. It has been over my expectations, not only because of the academics, but the people are spectacular. The professors, my friends, the experiences, the, you know, the talks that we have with these experts in every single topic that you can ever think of. It's spectacular.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what was it like when you found out this week that after all the work you've put in, in your academics to get to the school, not to mention begging and borrowing and applying for the money to get here, that because of the Trump administration's immigration policies, you might have to leave Cambridge, have to leave Harvard, and do this online from Mexico?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So first, I was in a state of shock, I admit. I was actually in another call when I got a WhatsApp text from a friend who's doing her PhD at Princeton, and she was like, hey, have you seen this?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: I was so shocked I had to hang up my other call. I was with my roommate at that same time and my phone just blew up with texts from all my friends, all of my WhatsApp groups.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: We were like, no, this can't be true. Like, this has to be a joke, a very bad joke. Of course, it's a misinterpretation of the law or of the policy.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And then we started getting emails from Harvard University as well. And they were equally shocked as we were.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So I think what I can tell you is that like my first reaction was of a lot of frustration Of course being from Mexico I mean I know how the politics of immigration work in the U especially with this administration since 2016 when Donald Trump was running for president.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: But I never imagined that I would actually be one of the people facing these immigration laws.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A few days later, MIT and your school, Harvard, announced they were suing the Trump administration over this decision. Was that reassuring?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So I admit that I felt sort of a bit reassured because I know that Harvard just doesn't sue anyone, right? If Harvard chose to sue the U.S. government. They choose their lawsuits carefully.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Yeah, exactly. So I was like, OK, so this is a good sign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: However, I admit that I'm very concerned and students in general are very concerned. They're putting all their bets on these on these decisions to sue the U.S. government.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: where, I mean, in the meantime, there are many other universities which have decided to sort of either join the lawsuit or to also, you know, transition into a hybrid model because they are doing everything in their power to protect their international students.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: In the case of Harvard, there's still a lot of uncertainty. There is no clarity with respect to whether they're going to decide to go hybrid or not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what are you doing in the meantime, Valeria? How are you making plans for the next weeks and months and even, you know, year of your life?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Okay, so in my specific case, oh my God, it has been such a roller coaster because since a few weeks ago when we knew that Harvard was going to go online, we had to face a decision of whether we chose a leave of absence for a year or whether we chose to stay even though it was going to be online, right?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So in that scenario, I got a job in Mexico. I was trying to evaluate my outside options and I had to reject that job because I was trying to push my student loans and I was going to lose some of my scholarships.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Then I rejected that job and now I'm faced with this other decision, I mean, about whether I'm going to have to either leave if I get kicked out of the country.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And then if I leave, you know, I already signed my lease. Many people have already signed student loans, including myself for next year.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So what's going to happen to those loans? What's going to happen to my furniture? I was doing some research on like the storage costs of leaving my furniture somewhere.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And it's going to cost me like around $1,500 for the year, which of course I don't have, I don't really have that money to spare.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and then, you know, like I'm trying to think, okay, if I go back to Mexico, my parents are a high risk population. My mom had cancer some years ago and my dad is also high risk because of health issues.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So like, I'm not sure that I can just go back to live at their place. Would I have to get another apartment in Mexico, like in the middle of a pandemic or how is that going to work?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: You know, also internet connectivity is not the best in Mexico and I cannot even imagine how it is in other places in the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, like there's so many, there are so many decisions right now that I feel like I have to make very fast.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And I think that's also very, very stressful because like the amount of time that we have to decide or to plan is very, is very little.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. I just imagine, in your case especially, this wasn't like, oh, I want to go to a good school. Mom, dad, buy me into an American university so I can, you know, have that American college experience.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: This, like, your whole life was designed to get into what very well may be the greatest university in the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: you just feel like collateral right now in this other mess that we're in.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Has this experience changed how you feel about the United States?
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: So I am a true believer that the United States is not determined by its politicians, but by its people in general.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: I have been very lucky in the sense that I have met amazing Americans here in Cambridge, but also, you know, like out of all the times that I had visited the U.S. before as a tourist, I know that the U.S. is way better than what the Trump administration is trying to implement.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And we can see it like everywhere, even, you know, in my program, even though 85 percent of the students are international students, the other 15 percent who are Americans are being very supportive.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: They're telling us like, guys, I'm so sorry. Let me know how I can help.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that's what America is all about, you know, helping others and helping each other actually and trying to learn from each other.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: And I think the reason why I came here is because I want to learn the best practices I want to learn from the best professors and from the best university in the world so that at some point I can just go back to my country and then implement everything that I have been learning here to make the world a better place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that's what most of us are trying to do yeah
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, Valeria, I really hope it works out for you and you get to stay
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Yeah, me too
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks so much for your time, we appreciate it
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: No, thank you so much for inviting me
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nicole and Norea, you cover immigration for Vox.
--:-- Nicole Narea: So international students bring not only their intellect, but also their dollars to U.S. universities.
--:-- Nicole Narea: They generate an estimated $45 billion for the U.S. economy annually.
--:-- Nicole Narea: $45 billion? Yeah, yeah, $45 billion. It's a huge amount, and they tend to pay tuition at a higher rate than domestic students as well, and they also support more than 450,000 jobs.
--:-- Nicole Narea: So they really are a big financial force in the U.S. university system, And without them, some academic programs would definitely suffer.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And this isn't just schools like Harvard or MIT, right? This is state schools, public schools where international students pay foreign tuition, which is oftentimes way, way higher than what local state students are expected to pay.
--:-- Nicole Narea: Yeah, absolutely. There are certain schools where there's a higher percentage of foreign students. But across the board, they really are providing some financial stability to these institutions.
--:-- Nicole Narea: and in a way subsidizing the education of Americans.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Valeria, obviously, from Mexico, but there's like a million of these international students in the United States.
--:-- Valeria Mendiola: Most of them are coming from China and India in particular, but some other big sending countries are South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how did the Trump administration decide to kick all these people out?
--:-- Nicole Narea: So when the pandemic hit back in March, a lot of colleges opted to go online and hold classes only online.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And while some international students decided to stay in the States to do that, a lot of them went home to finish their course of study.
--:-- Nicole Narea: But the administration said that in this case, students on temporary F-1 and M-1 visas could stay in the U.S. or near campus to do that.
--:-- Nicole Narea: and many of them live in off-campus apartments so that was that was feasible for them but I guess the question the big question has been what's going to happen in the fall for the curriculum of many universities will they all be online this week Harvard announced that they would put the full 2020 to 2021 school year online and right after that the Trump administration said that students need to be taking now at least one class in person in order to stay in the country
--:-- Nicole Narea: that's still more lenient than the policy that existed before the pandemic.
--:-- Nicole Narea: But it really does hamper schools' efforts to keep students, staff, and other members of the community safe and prevent these institutions from becoming super spreaders, because many of them were going to opt to be fully online.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's the Trump administration's defense for this plan to send all these students home?
--:-- Nicole Narea: So the Trump administration did have a policy before the pandemic of prohibiting foreign students from taking online only course loads.
--:-- Nicole Narea: Obviously, they suspended that for the duration of the pandemic.
--:-- Nicole Narea: But Trump is also trying to get colleges to reopen in the fall and public schools in general.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And the acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Ken Cuccinelli, has actually said.
--:-- Nicole Narea: This is now setting the rules for one semester, which we'll finalize later this month, that will again encourage schools to reopen.
--:-- Nicole Narea: They've pretty directly tied this new policy change to a political goal here.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And, you know, while there may be good arguments for reopening, say, elementary schools, the risks of doing that are totally different from those associated with the risks of reopening universities.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And it seems like he is in some ways trying to equate the two.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you saying that this so much about President Trump wanting to get rid of international students and send them home though one could easily mistake this for that
--:-- Nicole Narea: This is more about forcing universities hands to reopen schools
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, absolutely. And he realizes the political stakes of that, certainly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know Harvard and MIT are suing the Trump administration to block this decision, but how are other schools across the country responding?
--:-- Nicole Narea: So a bunch of schools have joined Harvard and MIT's lawsuit, Princeton and Stanford included.
--:-- Nicole Narea: But there have also been other lawsuits filed in other federal courts across the country.
--:-- Nicole Narea: The University of California has also said it's going to file its own suit. The state of California is suing.
--:-- Nicole Narea: But, you know, there does seem to be a different response to this depending on the school.
--:-- Nicole Narea: Certain state schools, for instance, might be more keen to reopen for in-person classes because the risks associated with doing that is just inherently lower.
--:-- Nicole Narea: Because, for example, many students may live at home, some may have jobs, and the campus isn't just as much of a center of social interaction that could lead these institutions to become super spreaders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we've already seen about 65% of most universities reporting that they plan to reopen in person.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is really just affecting those 45 percent that haven't said so yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are the universities that, you know, will be hit hard by this doing other than suing the administration?
--:-- Nicole Narea: Some schools that were planning to go online or mostly online have said that they are going to try to offer at least one in-person class to international students just so that they can stay in the country.
--:-- Nicole Narea: But the community on these campuses is also stepping in to try to protect their fellow international students.
--:-- Nicole Narea: Professors are offering in-person independent studies on an individual basis to students that are affected.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And students in the U.S. are giving up their spots in in-person classes to international students.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we really are seeing a kind of rallying around the international student community on these campuses.
--:-- Nicole Narea: There's like a grassroots movement to protect these students from being deported.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the value to the university community goes beyond just sort of the dollars that these students bring in.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And we're seeing that play out in the way that professors and students are reacting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do we know if these lawsuits stand a chance to stop this from happening?
--:-- Nicole Narea: I mean, do these schools have a good case?
--:-- Nicole Narea: ICE is sort of likely to argue here that they have a lot of discretion in this situation.
--:-- Nicole Narea: The hope from immigration attorneys is that this litigation will at least delay the implementation of this new guidance until the worst of the pandemic is passed and schools will reopen for in-person classes anyway.
--:-- Nicole Narea: That's the long-term objective of these places.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we should know more by next Wednesday, July 15th, when the judge in the Harvard and MIT case is supposed to issue a ruling.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hmm. What does this mean for like international students like broadly?
--:-- Nicole Narea: I mean, I asked Valeria how she feels about the United States after all this, but I wonder, you know, more broadly speaking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if this is becoming a heck of a lot less of an attractive place for international students to come study.
--:-- Nicole Narea: Yeah, we've seen almost a 10% decline in enrollment from foreign students since Trump was selected.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So these policies do have an impact in terms of the United States' attractiveness as a destination for these students.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And for those who did choose to come here in the first place, the idea of home just got a lot more complicated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, so some of them are still stranded abroad due to the pandemic-related travel bans that are still in effect.
--:-- Nicole Narea: I talked to one student in Sweden who wouldn't be able to come back for the fall semester just because she would have to go through another country that isn't facing a U.S.-imposed travel ban, stay there for two weeks, and then fly from there to the U.S. so she could be let in.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And all that's prohibitively expensive.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And others can't even go home at all.
--:-- Nicole Narea: You know, there's students from Venezuela, for example, who can't go back to their home country because it's in the middle of a humanitarian and political crisis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there are a lot of challenges that any one international student could be facing.
--:-- Nicole Narea: And for many of them, it's impractical, if not impossible, to go home.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can find Nicole Noreas reporting on this story at Vox.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramasperim. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Liz Nelson is the editorial director of Vox Podcasts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Today Explained team includes Amina Alsadi, Muj Zaydi, Jillian Weinberger, Bridget McCarthy, Halima Shah, Afim Shapiro, and Noam Hassenfeld, who dabbles in music.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder's entire life is music.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we had a whole lot of help this week from Paul Mounsey.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's give him a round of applause. Thank you.
