Indian Students can't stay after tenure - Fusion - WeRIndia

On May 11th, American President Donald Trump issued a new draft policy.

This new draft policy seeks to crack down on any foreign students who are overstaying their welcome in the United States.

The new policy will come into effect on August 9th. It proposes to change the current methodology of computing “unlawful presence days”.

These “unlawful presence days” refer to the students staying in the United States after their visa tenure has ended. Under this policy, the number of unlawful presence days will be computed from the first day when the students fail to maintain their immigration status.

Students can fail to maintain their immigration status in a number of ways.

The first day when they fail to maintain their immigration status could be the day when they stop pursuing their course of study, complete their program and authorized grace period, or engage in unauthorized activity.

F-1 students are given a grace period of 60 days after they complete their studies.

During these 60 days, F-1 students must either leave the United States or change their status. For example, they could change their status to a work visa.

However, if students spend unlawful presence days in the United States, they could be barred from reentering the country.

Based on the number of unlawful days a student spends in the United States, he or she can be prevented from entering or staying in the country.

Students can also be banned from obtaining permanent residency in the country.

Therefore, this new policy can create even more hurdles for foreign students attempting to become permanent American residents.

The Open Doors Report of 2017 gave International Student Data which showed that the number of Indian students in the United States increased by 12% between 2016 and 2017.

This means that the number of Indian students in the United States currently stands at 1.86 lakh. Now, with this new policy, it will be much more difficult for these Indian students to continue their stay in America for much longer.

Image credit: President Trump at his desk image by The White House (Public Domain Mark 1.0)

Image Reference: https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/46451130962