50% Indian students among revoked US visa cases, claims lawyers’ body

The Donald Trump administration has revoked visas for several international students, half of them being from India, an American lawyers’ body has claimed.

The Donald Trump administration has revoked visas for several international students, including those from India. (AFP)

The American Immigration Lawyers’ Association (AILA) claimed that 50 per cent of 327 students whose visas were revoked are from India. According to a PTI report, the immigration lawyers’ body said it collected 327 reports of visa revocations and Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) terminations from attorneys, students, and university employees.

“Of these reports – 50 percent of these students were from India, followed by 14 percent from China. Other significant countries represented in this data include South Korea, Nepal, and Bangladesh,” PTI quoted the AILA statement as saying.

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“Based on these reports, it is clear that transparency, oversight, and accountability are needed to prevent further arbitrary visa revocations and SEVIS record terminations. Finally, there should be a way for students to appeal SEVIS terminations that are inaccurate without facing a gap in their employment or requiring the university to be involved, given the sheer numbers of those impacted,” the statement added.

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International students ask US judges to block immigration officials

According to a Reuters report, international students have moved courts in US, asking the judges to block immigration officials from deporting them after the Trump administration began revoking the rights of thousands of student visa holders to remain in the United States.

On Tuesday alone, judges in Massachusetts, Montana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., issued emergency orders barring immigration authorities from acting against students after the government canceled their legal basis for being in the U.S., part of Trump’s broad immigration crackdown.

Krish Isserdasani, a 21-year-old undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from India, is among them. He acknowledged that while walking home from a bar in November, he was arrested for disorderly conduct after a verbal argument.

The local district attorney declined to pursue charges against Isserdasani. But on April 4, his university informed him that his database record has been terminated, the report added. A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled Tuesday that the government’s action was likely unlawful.