A FEDERAL judge has temporarily blocked a Trump administration rule that sought to cap the stays of foreign students, journalists and exchange visitors in the US, a day before it was due to take effect.
The decision offers relief to international students in the US, including many from India, one of the largest source countries for foreign students in America.
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Massachusetts district judge F Dennis Saylor IV ruled on Monday that the new policy would likely cause "catastrophic" damage to the US economy and higher-education system, rejecting the government's argument that the rule was necessary to protect the country.
The rule, finalized in July, would have imposed a four-year limit on student and exchange visitor visas and a 240-day limit on journalists' visas, with a separate 90-day limit for Chinese journalists.
It would have ended the decades-old "duration of status" system, under which foreign students, including large numbers of Indians pursuing undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs, have generally been allowed to remain in the US while maintaining their academic status.
Under the now-blocked rule, students and journalists could have applied for extensions, but approval would have been at the discretion of Department of Homeland Security officials, with no provision to appeal a denial.
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Saylor also rejected the government's request to limit relief to the plaintiffs rather than apply it nationwide.
The plaintiffs represent nearly 600 public and private institutions, but the judge noted there are more than 5,000 higher-education institutions across the US.
Limiting relief only to the parties involved, he said, would require maintaining parallel regulatory regimes and making repeated, potentially inconsistent determinations about which students or institutions fell within the order's scope.
Several organizations representing the higher education sector and labor unions had challenged the rule in court. Harvard President Alan M Garber had earlier called the rule "odd," noting that a typical PhD program takes at least six years. "A typical PhD program usually takes at least six years, so four years is a bit odd as the cutoff for the visa," Garber said in July.
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The DHS had argued that the limits would help curb fraud and make it easier to prevent visa overstays.
Saylor, however, raised concerns about potential abuse of the rule, writing of "the obvious likelihood that the visas of foreign journalists who are critical of the government -- more particularly, DHS officials -- will not be renewed."
He added: "The weakness of the connection between the rule and its purported rationales raises legitimate questions as to whether its real purpose is not to safeguard national security and protect our borders, but to achieve other, undisclosed, goals -- such as, for example, asserting greater government control over academic institutions and the press."
The preliminary injunction halts implementation of the rule while the case proceeds in court.
(With inputs from agencies)
