A FEDERAL judge on Monday blocked US President Donald Trump's administration from implementing a new rule that would limit how long foreign students and journalists can remain in the US without applying for extensions.
US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor in Boston ruled in favor of a coalition of unions and higher education advocacy groups a day before the Department of Homeland Security's rule was set to take effect.
Saylor said DHS adopted the policy based on "exceptionally weak" rationales. The agency had cited national security and need to prevent fraud in the visa program, but judge found it had not adhered to its legal obligations to engage with concerns about policy change or consider less burdensome alternatives.
In a statement, DHS General Counsel James Percival criticized Saylor's ruling, saying that under it, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement must "permit this rampant abuse of our immigration system." "Come on a student visa, take one class per semester, and stay here for decades," he said.
Saylor, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, wrote the rule upended a system through which the US for nearly five decades had issued visas to foreign students for their "duration of status." That system, he said, has permitted tens of millions of foreign students and researchers to come to the US, leading to "groundbreaking research in science, medicine, and technology, substantial economic growth, and a host of other benefits, often on a vast scale."
Under the rule, F visas for international students and J visas that allow visitors on cultural exchange programs to work in the US would be capped at four years, while I visas for journalists, which currently can last years, would be up to 240 days. About 1.6 million people currently have F visas and another 500,000 have J visas.
This is a clash between two immigration philosophies: "duration of status" - trusted since the 1970s, flexible for PhDs - vs fixed 4-year cap to stop overstays. Saylor, a Bush appointee, called DHS rationale exceptionally weak, saying it ignored reliance interests of universities. For India, which sends the largest cohort of F-1 students, a 4-year cap would have forced doctoral and STEM OPT students into repeated extensions, creating uncertainty and bureaucracy. The block is temporary but signals courts remain a check on Trump's immigration overhaul - even as DHS signals it will keep pushing fraud narratives.