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Business News/ Opinion / Quick Edit/  America should treat overseas students fairly
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America should treat overseas students fairly

The Trump administration’s revocation of a directive to block international students from staying in the country should ease the anxieties of students and also help its own economy. International students make a big contribution and it must be recognized.

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It took a week for the Donald Trump administration to reportedly revoke its directive to block international students from staying in the United States in the wake of the covid outbreak. The decision comes after as many as 17 states and top educational institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed lawsuits against the move.

Had President Trump pressed ahead with it, eviction from the country would have made thousands of students anxious about their future. Many students take loans and their families spend lifetime savings to fund their studies—in campus—so that they get the complete experience of an American education, which is said to be one of the best in the world. Sending them back home would have not only been unfair, but it could have also affected the quality of their education due to possible infrastructure problems in connecting to online classes and accessing study resources that some of them might have faced.

America also stood to lose. The absence of students in campuses would have affected local economies of shops, house renters etc that typically function around universities and student communities. The US department of Commerce estimates that international students contributed $45 billion to the American economy in 2018. This, by any standard, is significant. Besides the economic benefits, having international students in classrooms—even if virtual ones—helps enrich the learning experience by adding to the diversity of students which helps all, including American students, build a better-informed worldview. Had the move been implemented, it is possible some universities could have side-stepped it by restarting campus classes so that overseas students didn’t have to leave. But this would have risked spreading the infection. That would have been in nobody’s interest.

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Published: 15 Jul 2020, 06:34 PM IST
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