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Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

> This is the part that feels punitive and particularly onerous to me

But that's the part that people are upset about. People aren't angry that there exists a policy to prevent students of fully online universities from getting visas.

People are upset that because it is completely reasonable for a traditional brick-and-mortar university to run classes 100% online this coming semester (e.g., Harvard) and that suddenly a bunch of students who are attending Harvard and have been doing so for years are forced to leave the country on a moment's notice.

What nuance is there? The original exception (you can take 100% online classes) was thoroughly reasonable given the pandemic and the new updated policy is completely unreasonable. It only harms people and benefits no one.

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What you are also discounting for is that once the student exits the country, they are caught in the quagmire of securing a stamping to reenter. Given the stance the current administration has taken around virtually all consular appointments/stampings, these students might as well consider their chances of returning to the US to pursue their respective degrees to be close to zero.

Also my understanding is that the criteria for being allowed to stay doesn't differentiate on the level of the degree. For instance, Phd students who have completed their course work but are busy working on their thesis and building their publishing record are royally screwed. I expect a number of transfers of some of the best and brightest to research universities in Canada and Europe. I personally witnessed how much of a boon the mistreatment of Iranian students by the US govt. was to universities in Canada. They got some of the best and brightest who would have otherwise been gobbled up by top schools in the US.

I expect a massive and permanent exodus of foreign students to other countries with more pragmatic policies in place.

Hasn't the thesis "course" always been "in person"? I don't see how this change affects the PhD candidates in any way.

I also find it funny that you bring up Canada as Canadian schools openly discriminate against international students thanks to government policies.

If you are taking 100% online classes there is no reason to have or need the VISA. The exception being for things like COVID etc. Those should be exceptional circumstances.

This definitely doesn’t make sense to me. Time zones are going to be a huge issue. If a coworker told me they were going to work from an asian/european timezone, we could try to make it work, but it’s definitely a hassle. The story is no different for universities and their courses.

Please explain your plan for what happens the following semester, once in-person classes resume, and these students are stuck abroad until such time that they are able to renew their visa stamps (which is a notoriously expensive, long process that can result in denials for completely arbitrary reasons).

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