International students react with horror on Twitter to ICE decision

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NEW YORK – International students reacted with dismay and horror on Twitter, appalled at the sudden turn of events imposed by immigration authorities which threatened their future education and career goals.

There were thousands of reactions with hundreds more pouring in on social media platforms, as students vented their feeling at the Trump administration and ICE.

A change.org petition calling for reversal of the rule to force international students out of the country if they were required to do only online classes, had garnered more than 70,000 responses within hours, on Tuesday, as of going to press. The petition’s goal was 75,000, a target probably reached within the next hour or so.

Here are some reactions on Twitter from students and sympathizers on ICE’s new rule on international students:

Anirban Das, a Transportation Design Engineer, based in Baltimore, MD: “I came to this country on an F-1 visa on a full scholarship. I am forever grateful to my university for providing me with the opportunity. The latest policy by ICE is simply to deport many bright foreign students. Many are RAs and TAs doing research or teaching undergrads. Cruel!

Just thinking about the aged-out Indian children who are on F-1 now. Legally here on H-4, they aged out from GC application when they turned 21. Now on F-1, they may have to self-deport, separated from their family All because they were born in a certain country.”

Hayley Fisher, a behavioral neuro PhD student at KState: “This is obscene, cruel, and extremely xenophobic. If universities are forced to go online for public safety, F-1 and M-1 visas are in violation due to taking a fully online course load. Turning a pandemic into an opportunity to drive out immigrants is despicable. #StudentBan.”

Shalmi: “People saying unis should offer in-person classes for intl students to meet the new visa requirements don’t get that we *really* can’t afford to get COVID. Most of us are alone in this country on poor insurance without family to nurse us through illness/recovery. ICE knows this.

“I specifically didn’t want to go back for in-person classes *because* I’m an intl student. This whole conditional visa thing is especially twisted, a real 4D chess move of evil.”

AnushkaNes: “Not only do they not care about us they don’t care about some unglamorous elderly brown people dying and sweating in a bed in some godforsaken corner of the third world and that upsets me WAY more than them not appreciating my role in the US academy

“I’m going to stop ranting after this, I promise. But I need to get one thing off my chest: what absolutely wrecks me about all the admin decisions lately is that no one, not even universities, care about what infection we bring back to our loved ones in the global south.”

Juan Pablo Sabillon: “I would say that ICE reached an all-time low with the new F-1 visa restrictions. But is it? They’ve been putting central american kids in cages for years.

“The US will continue to experience democratic backsliding with data-less, irrational and nationalist policies.

Cherrie Demayo: “This is distressing. I was an F-1 visa holder; aged out of my dad’s H-1B. My whole family was here. If this happened to me, I would’ve been separated from my family during a stressful and uncertain time. This is horrible.”

Abhijnan Rej: “I say this w/ great sadness, as someone who earned two degrees, and embarked on a third, on an F-1 visa: the quicker we start viewing the US *purely* as a military partner (and forget about this P2P/education/trade & “shared values” stuff) the better it is for the relationship.”

Akshitha Sriraman: “I wonder what this means for Ph.D. students on an F-1 visa whose “independent study” is almost certainly going to be remote.”