S3 E10 Global Compliance: What Every DSO & Student Needs to Know| Dr. Josh Schoonover, Ask A DSO

Let, let me dive into my crystal ball on that.

But, but first, you know, some of the stuff that's already happened is, uh, [laughs] you know, we, we laugh because that's what, that's what our business is like.

What, what is coming down the pipe? How's it gonna impact our international students? How can we prepare for that ahead of time? You know, there's been some things obviously that we've already seen.

We've seen the revised travel ban that unlike Trump's first term, uh, this one has withheld judicial scrutiny and it's been in place for several months now, and there's no indication that that's going to change and that, uh, you know, bans travel from students from 20 countries and severely restricts travel from country- from students from 20 other countries.

They...

Now, those students who are from those countries and are already in the US, they're allowed to remain in the US, their visas aren't revoked, the travel's restricted.

But another thing that we're seeing in practice, and this is all anecdotal right now because there's obviously no official, uh, reports about this, but many students from these impacted countries, their applications for future visas, future benefits, OPT, H1Bs, things of that nature, they're not getting processed.

And it's not that-

Yeah

... they're not getting denied, they're just not getting approved.

And so then you have like OPT, you know, I'm seeing it with students from certain countries.

You can probably guess which ones they are.

You know, there's the 90-day standard processing time, and that goes 90 days to 120 days, and now you're getting past 120 days.

And I'm even starting to see some students on, uh, who have applied for the STEM OPT extension.

STEM OPT extension, you automatically get six months of, of work renewal because the idea was you will have a decision within those six months.

Well, now we're seeing some students in STEM OPT, it's extending beyond that.

And, uh, it... what appears to be happening is just a form, a sick and twisted form of the waiting game where they're like, "Well, we don't have to give you an answer, so we're just gonna see how long you can stay in the US and deal with this uncertainty." And, you know, in these situations, you're waiting for OPT approval, you're waiting for STEM OPT approval without working.

So it, it's-

Yeah

... become really unfortunate and, and that's already happening.

And then what we're looking at, forward at is, you know, potential for no second master's degrees, for having to go, a- ascending in program level, bachelor's, master's, doctorate, not being able to transfer out, um, yeah, at, at the graduate level, and potentially even a, uh, reduction of the...

Well, the, the big one is a, a fixed term for how long people are able to stay in the US.

Right now, it's duration of status.

They can stay as long as they're enrolled in the program of study.

But this rule would make it so they'd have to, uh, uh, apply at the end of every program to extend their status.