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With the second Trump administration set to begin in a few weeks, international college students are facing a difficult decision. Should they return home for winter break? And if they do, should they fly back to the United States before the inauguration? New England Public Media's Jill Kaufman explains.
JILL KAUFMAN: College students are wrapping up their finals, and many are getting ready to leave campus for winter vacation. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, that's a nearly six-week break.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I'm going back home.
KAUFMAN: Home is China for this second-year PhD student. She asked us not to use her name. She feared it could jeopardize her student visa. She's not dismissing the advice from UMass, which, like other colleges, is recommending international students return to the U.S. by January 20. But she's not following the advice, either, just hoping for the best, she says, and she's returning after the inauguration.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: I want to stay in China as long as I can.
KAUFMAN: It's a 17-hour flight, and it's expensive, she says, to change her ticket. But a lot of her friends rescheduled to return to campus early. Just the possibility of travel restriction is creating a deja vu moment for Musbah Shaheen, who is now a professor at UMass Amherst.
MUSBAH SHAHEEN: The feelings of don't leave, don't move, don't do anything, just stay put.
KAUFMAN: Sixteen-hundred international undergraduate students and almost 4,000 graduate students are at UMass Amherst. Like at other colleges in the U.S., many are in the STEM fields of study. Shaheen is from Syria. He was a senior at Vanderbilt University in the year Trump was first elected. In 2017, when President Trump took office, he signed an executive order restricting travel to the U.S. from seven majority-Muslim countries, including Syria.
SHAHEEN: It made it essentially impossible for me to leave after my degree because I knew I couldn't come back for the master's.
KAUFMAN: Shaheen got that master's and a doctorate. Now he says he's watching international students struggle with their decision to stay in the U.S. over break.
SHAHEEN: You're not just away. You're oceans away from what you know, and you're homesick, and you were looking forward to going back for a break time, and that is not going to happen.
KAUFMAN: More than a million international students and scholars are studying and doing research in the U.S. More than half are from China or India. Immigration attorney Dan Berger, who has been working with American universities for decades, says school administrators and students just don't know what's going to happen.
DAN BERGER: We recommend buying travel insurance, not making nonrefundable deposits for travel, because there is uncertainty about what will happen next year and what the details will be.
KAUFMAN: And, Berger says, he's trying to help universities understand that students need more flexibility from campus housing to the timing of their enrollment.
BERGER: If I'm an international student, I would like the school to be as flexible as possible with understanding that I may not be able to go at the last minute if the immigration situation is not good.
KAUFMAN: Under the Biden administration, Berger says some students are already facing delays coming into the U.S. He's seen this for people coming from Russia, China and Iran. In an email, U.S. Customs and Border Protection didn't confirm or refute Berger's observations. A spokesperson said, all international travelers attempting to enter the United States are subject to examination.
In the first Trump administration, Berger says no one saw the travel restrictions coming. International students and scholars with visas just had to wait it out. This time around, he says, they have to be ready for anything. If another ban happens, UMass Amherst Professor Musbah Shaheen says students will have to think hard about whether to leave for summer break. Will they be able to return for their next year? For NPR News, I'm Jill Kaufman in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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