US judge blocks Trump rule limiting visas for foreign students, journalists

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Trump administration rule that sought to limit the duration of stays for foreign students, journalists and exchange visitors, just a day before the policy was due to take effect.

Massachusetts District Judge F Dennis Saylor IV on Monday said the new policy would likely cause “catastrophic” harm to the US economy and higher education system, rejecting the government's argument that the measure was necessary to protect the country.

The rule, finalised by the Trump administration in July, imposed a four-year limit on student and exchange visitor visas and a 240-day limit on visas for journalists, except those from China. Under the rule, Chinese journalists would have been subject to a 90-day visa limit.

The policy was scheduled to take effect on Tuesday. It allowed students and journalists to seek extensions, but approval would have been left to officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with no provision to appeal a rejected extension request.

Saylor also rejected the government's argument that the relief should apply only to the plaintiffs rather than nationwide.

The preliminary injunction prevents the new rule from being implemented while the case proceeds in court.

The plaintiffs represent nearly 600 public and private institutions. However, the judge noted that the US has more than 5,000 higher-education institutions.

Restricting the relief to the institutions represented by the plaintiffs would require authorities to maintain parallel regulatory systems and repeatedly determine whether individual students or institutions were covered by the court's order, potentially leading to inconsistent decisions, Saylor ruled.

Several organisations, mainly representing higher education institutions and labour unions, had approached the court seeking to have the rule struck down.

Harvard President Alan M Garber had criticised the rule as “odd”, pointing to the length of doctoral programmes. In July, he said a typical PhD programme usually takes at least six years, making a four-year visa limit unusual.

The DHS, however, argued that the restrictions would help prevent fraud and make it easier to address cases involving people who overstay their visas.

The judge also highlighted the possibility that the blocked rule could be misused.

Saylor wrote that there was “in particular, the obvious likelihood that the visas of foreign journalists who are critical of the government -- more particularly, DHS officials -- will not be renewed.”

He said the weak connection between the rule and the reasons cited by the government for introducing it raised legitimate questions about whether its actual purpose was to achieve undisclosed objectives, including greater government control over academic institutions and the press, rather than solely protecting national security and the country's borders.  (with inputs from PTI)