The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/international-students/page/3/)
After ICE’s latest announcement on Monday restricting international students, campus organizations join together to circulate petitions and take action against the decision.
In her most recent email to the student body, President Martha E. Pollack criticized ICE’s restrictions on international students and informed the community of actions the University is taking to shift ICE’s ruling.
To the Editor:
The recent announcement from the Department of Homeland Security adding restrictions to Non-immigrant F-1 student visas is a xenophobic, bigoted and inhumane political stunt designed to further nationalist rhetoric. The decision to restrict student visas is the latest attack on the international community under the guise of national economic security or public health. These include but are not limited to the 2018 Muslim travel ban, various attempts to overturn Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policies and recent rollbacks on foreign worker visas. Denying students the right to educational opportunities based on immigration status is in direct violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This discrimination based on national origin endangers not only student achievement, mental health and physical health amidst a global pandemic, but is also detrimental to the longevity of Cornell’s educational philosophy and Ithaca’s economy.
Cornell’s tuition rates will increase this upcoming fall semester, despite financial constraints placed on students during COVID-19.
I joined The Sun in fall 2017 for reasons I no longer remember, but I was certain that I would not last a semester. I had never done any journalism in my life, and before college, I had never written anything in English more than 300 words. Somehow, I stuck around and even made it to editorship, but every single day I was down at The Sun’s red brick office in the Commons, I questioned if I was qualified to be there. When I had to call the shots on something, I wondered if the swarm of talented people in the newsroom was actually convinced by my reasonings, or if they were just being nice. I’ve been hyper-aware of who I am since the very beginning of my time in this country, when a customs officer at John F. Kennedy airport commented on how well I speak English “for a Chinese student” as he stamped my passport.
Cornell’s International Council, a team headed by the vice provost for international affairs with the mission to bridge Cornell with the rest of the world, released its guidelines on ethical international engagement last Thursday, calling upon the minds of leaders from each college and school to develop a cohesive guide to international collaboration.
For many international students, their trips to Cornell routinely take up to dozens of hours and are often accompanied by sleep deprivation, difficult accommodations and surprising episodes.
President Martha E. Pollack ran through a laundry list of ongoing initiatives at the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly on Monday, including efforts to improve mental health, provide more assistance for international students and students with disabilities, and increase diversity of both the undergraduate and graduate student bodies.
With droves of students scoring internships and jobs for the summer, many international students have not reported the same amount of luck. While they may have equally competitive resumes and transcripts as domestic students, the lack of guidance on how to secure work visa sponsorships from employers has been one of the major obstacles for their job search.
Lidia Mandava ’20 has returned home just once since she came to Cornell. Arzu Mammadova ’20 — who speaks four languages — struggled sometimes in her first-year writing seminar. Georgia Makris ’20 and AbdulRahman Al-Mana ’20 both described missing out on their changing hometowns. All these students are either the only, or one of a handful, student to ever attend Cornell from their home countries.