California Sues Donald Trump

By Lois Chun

Cypress High School

On July 6th, 2020 Trump’s administration decided that they were going to suspend visas for foreign exchange students. This was decided when many colleges and universities decided that they were going to hold online-only courses in the fall. The ICE stated that the U.S Department of State will no longer issue visas to students that are enrolled in school or programs that are fully online during the fall semester. However, the active students that are currently in the United States enrolled in programs that plan to be online must depart the country or take other measures. This order will affect more than one million student visa holders in the U.S.  

While the order went out and many college students were in panic, California decided to sue the Trump administration on the 9th of July. California argued that if the students were to be sent back to school it would only worsen the spread of COVID-19. California State Chancellor Timothy White states, “It is a callous and inflexible policy that unfairly disrupts our more-than 10,300 international students’ progress to a degree, unnecessarily placing them in an extremely difficult position.” The new federal policy would not only harm students, but would make campuses suffer from the lost revenue, when this order is placed. 

Joseph Kim, a freshman at Cypress High School states, “I understand his reasoning when he says, if international students don’t need to stay here to study on campus then they aren’t really using their visa to study, but I think that sending international students back was unnecessary.” This is totally understandable. Sending the students back that worked hard in order to get a visa is unnecessary. Not only is this policy undesirable, but it is dangerous considering the number of COVID-19 cases appearing in the United States. “I don’t know why he’d do that with the coronavirus going around now. The students would have to travel back, possibly bringing the virus with them back to the homeland. This would only cause the spreading of the disease to increase again,” states Evelyn Tran, freshman at Cypress High School. 

I understand where Trump is coming from stating that international students don’t physically need to be in the United States when the classes are going to be online. However, this was uncalled for because not only is it going to harm many colleges, it may also increase the cases of COVID-19, if these students are going to be sent back to their homeland.