Universities in the United States have urged international students to resume before president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. Trump is set to be sworn in on January 20.
The universities advised international students to return early from winter break amid promises of another travel ban by the incoming president. Many international students were stranded abroad when Trump imposed a travel ban at the start of his first administration.
The president-elect has been vocal about his hardline immigration stance. Some of the actions Trump has promised to take include a travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries and the revocation of student visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners”.
Trump’s appointment of Stephen Miller as incoming Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy has also posed significant challenges for prospective international students Miller worked in the first Trump administration as a senior adviser and is famed for his extremist rhetoric on immigration.
Cornell University’s Office of Global Learning advised students who are traveling abroad to return before January 21. “A travel ban is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration,” the university warned in late November.
“The ban is likely to include citizens of the countries targeted in the first Trump administration: Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan, Tanzania, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. “New countries could be added to this list, particularly China and India.”
The University of Southern California urged its over 17,000 international students to return, at least, one week before Trump’s White House return.
The advice comes as many prospective Nigerian international students are flocking to the US amid tightened immigration restrictions in the United Kingdom (UK), a popular choice for international study.
A US government report published last month named Nigeria as its seventh largest source of international students globally and the highest in Africa, with 20,029 enrollees.
In June, while Trump battled to reclaim the White House, a survey showed that the former US president received his highest global confidence rating in Nigeria at 63 per cent.
A week after the survey, Trump promised he would ensure foreign students get automatic green cards after graduation from universities in the country if he won the election.
Hours after Trump’s comments, Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s press secretary, issued a statement saying there would be an “aggressive vetting process” that would “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters, and public charges”. Leavitt said the policy would apply only to the “most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America”.
