United States government has on Tuesday rescinded its controversial decision to revoke foreign student visas whose courses move online due to coronavirus.
The universities of Harvard and MIT, with the support of a number of other institutions, had taken legal action against the move that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on July 6.
Judge Allison Burroughs in a brief hearing said;
The government has agreed to rescind the decision as well as any implementation of the directive.
Harvard and MIT earlier this month had asked the court to block the order announced by ICE that students must leave the country if their classes are only online, or transfer to a school offering in-person tuition.
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The measure was seen as a move by President Donald Trump administration to put pressure on educational institutions that are adopting a cautious approach to reopening amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The universities in their lawsuit said that the order would harm students immensely both personally and financially.
The universities referred to ICE’s directive as “arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion.”
ICE will now reinstate the guidelines it applied to the Spring 2020 semester, which allowed international students with F-1 visas to take fully online course loads while retaining their visa status.
There were more than one million international students in the US for the 2018-19 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education (IIE).
