Foreign Students May Leave US If Universities Go Online – ICE
On Monday, July 6, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that international students in America will leave the country if their universities switch to online teaching.
The present development will affect thousands of foreign students who are in America for university education, CNN reports.
It should be noted that the universities are making the switch as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. For instance, at Harvard, course instructions will be delivered online which will include on-campus students.
“There’s so much uncertainty. It’s very frustrating. If I have to go back to Mexico, I am able to go back, but many international students just can’t,” Valeria Mendiola, 26, a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said.
ICE, however, added that students that are under certain visa categories may stay back in the US and not take a full online course.
It went ahead to say the US will not give visas to students whose schools offer full online courses for the fall semester.
The agency said that students may consider transferring to a school with an in-person system or those who offer a mix both.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, about 1.2 million students in more than 8,700 schools could be affected by the latest development.
CNN also reports that while transferring could be an option, doing that may be so difficult amid rising concerns of Covid-19.
Odogwublog.com gathered that scientists alerted the public of a new flu virus resident in Chinese pigs, saying it has become even more infectious and dangerous to humans and needs to be closely monitored so it does not become another pandemic .
The study by the scientists said the virus threat is not imminent. The discovery was made when a team of researchers assessed influenza viruses found in pigs from 2011 to 2018.
They found a G4 strain of H1N1 which has all the features of being a pandemic. The paper of the study was published by the US Journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
It was also discovered that people who work on pig farms have a high amount of the virus in their bloodstreams, adding that it is important to monitor workers in the swine industry.
