This archive report was first published on 11 July 2020.
Published on July 11, 2020, a week after the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rolled out new guidelines stating that international students whose institutions were only offering online classes would be required to leave the country.
International students, including hundreds of Kenyans in the US, are scrambling to figure out their next move. The new guidelines from ICE state that students would be forced to leave the US or transfer to other colleges if their schools entirely offer classes online this fall.
"This rule has brought a lot of anxiety and fear among us Kenyan international students in the US," said Mordecai Njoroge, a Kenyan-born student at Cornerstone University in Michigan. "The directive is not even clear and so there's just uncertainty and we don't know what to do."
Mr. Njoroge is one of an estimated 3,451 Kenyan students enrolled in US institutions of higher learning in the 2018-2019 academic year, who could be affected by the changes.
Prof. David Monda, a lecturer at City University of New York (CUNY), noted that poorly thought out policy of US immigration has thrown the educational plans of many foreign students into disarray. They could lose their scholarships and get deported for being out of status. In addition, Prof. Monda said, many students are themselves parents which poses the real challenge of separating families.
"To me, this appears to be a blatant political ploy from the Trump Administration to gain cheap political points on immigration for the November election," he added.
Prof. Jerono Rotich, founder and CEO of Kenya Students in Diaspora (KESID) Foundation, said majority of international students are grappling with this new development that they are now living in heightened fear, anxiety and uncertainty in the midst of the pandemic.
"The unsettling feeling for most of these students is the thought of abandoning studies, the uncertainties of their health especially in airports if they have to travel back home given the recent cases of a majority of airline workers contracting Covid-19 and most succumbing to it," she said.
