Global Nation

Monday brought disappointing news for Harvard University sophomore Noah Furlonge-Walker.

Due to the coronavirus, all of the university’s undergraduate classes will be held online this fall, and fewer than half of students will be allowed on campus.

The same day, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that international students like Furlonge-Walker would be stripped of their student visas if their coursework is entirely online. Under the new rules, international students must leave the country — or would not be allowed in — if they cannot take classes in person.

“I was pretty upset about it because it couldn't have come at a worse time,” said Furlonge-Walker, who returned to his home country, Trinidad and Tobago, after Harvard closed its campus in response to the pandemic in March. “It was a lot of news to take in on one day, and it just felt like the US was making it particularly hard on international students.”

ICE’s announcement left many international students wondering whether they would be able to complete their degrees or return to their lives in the US. It also left universities scrambling to rethink some of the pandemic contingency plans they’ve made for fall — and to find ways to keep their students in the country. Some experts say it’s the Trump administration’s way of forcing universities to reopen before it’s safe to do so.

Universities and advocates for international students were quick to slam the new rules.

Harvard, along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sued the federal government Wednesday, saying the guidelines “threw all of higher education into chaos.” The suit seeks to temporarily block the government from enforcing the policy, saying it was not implemented properly. Dozens of universities signed on to an amicus brief in support of the Harvard and MIT. And many released statements saying they are studying the guidelines and looking for ways to support international students. California also filed a similar lawsuit Thursday.

ICE's guidance “imposes a blunt, one-size-fits-all approach to a complex problem.”

Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said in a statement Tuesday that ICE's guidance “imposes a blunt, one-size-fits-all approach to a complex problem.”

The American Council on Education called the announcement “horrifying.”

“This guidance raises more questions than it answers and unfortunately does more harm than good,” it said in a statement. “Regrettably, this guidance provides confusion and complexity rather than certainty and clarity.”

Some 1.1 million students were enrolled in US universities during the 2018-19 school year, according to the Institute of International Education. Most of them are on F-1 student visas. The federal government provided special exemptions that allowed them to study remotely during the coronavirus outbreak in March. Usually, those on student visas may attend a maximum of one class online; the rest must be in person.

Related: Visa restrictions on Chinese students will disadvantage US, says Queens College president

But the pandemic is far from over in the US, and many universities have opted to continue offering remote instruction in the upcoming school year. According to the Chronicle for Higher Education, which is tracking more than 1,000 universities around the country, 9% will have remote instruction and 24% will implement a hybrid model, which offers a mix of in-person and online classes.

Under ICE’s guidelines, students will be allowed to take more than one class online if they’re enrolled in colleges and universities offering hybrid classes. But students and their universities have to go through a certification process.

In an interview with

For American universities, catering to international students is big business. Each year, more than 1 million come here to study. About a third are from China.

But come fall, many may be absent. This week, the Trump administration announced that international students would not be allowed to enter or remain in the US if their colleges and universities are online-only this fall. The move drew swift backlash from higher education administrators and advocates. Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed a lawsuit against the government Wednesday to block the measure.

Unlike domestic students, international students often pay full tuition — which helps universities to fund scholarships and their general operations. International students injected nearly $45 billion into the US economy in 2018.

For some international students, remote learning could mean attending classes in the middle of the night, dealing with spotty or no internet access, losing funding contingent on teaching, or having to stop participating in research. Some are considering taking time off or leaving their programs entirely.

Frank Wu, president of Queens College in New York, has written about the US government's complicated relationship with students from China. He joined The World's host Carol Hills for a conversation on the Trump administration's new guidance and its impact on international students in the US.

Related: Universities scramble to help international universities stay in US after new visa restrictions

Carol Hills: Frank, how do you interpret this move by the Trump administration? Is it about politics or public health?

Frank Wu: It's about everything. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Even before this, there was suspicion and statements, including by the president himself, that almost all students coming from China are spies. That was said by the president at a private dinner. And it made the news, but the story didn't stick, which was just one of many things that are said along similar lines. About 350,000 students per year have been coming from China. That's pre-pandemic. So they're the biggest part of the international student population.

But there is a public health piece to this. I mean, one could say that you're working on the basis of public health if you're restricting students from overseas from coming to the US. What's your sense of that?

Oh, absolutely. That probably isn't the reason, because at the same time this ban on foreign students was announced, the president said he would pressure states to pressure schools, including colleges, to reopen. So, it doesn't make sense to say, well, let's have everyone reopen, but then let's keep out people from places with lower rates of the coronavirus.

Do you think many Chinese students enrolled at American universities will just say, "Forget it, I'll enroll in a university in Asia or Europe instead"?

That's already happened. For many international students, the United Kingdom looks very popular, or just staying home. We face a real risk of a reverse brain drain. So, I'm an American. I was born here in the United States, grew up in Detroit. My parents, they were born in China. They grew up in Taiwan, and they came to the United States in the 1960s, that bygone era when America was welcoming people. And America invested in them. They didn't just come. They came as scholarship students. America wanted to recruit them. It was a good investment because my parents became citizens, taxpayers, contributors. My family has staked its fortunes on this side of the Pacific Ocean.

It's pretty clear you interpret this move by the Trump administration as a move against China and Chinese students. What does the US lose if many of these students decide to go to another university and not wait it out for trying to finish at a US university?

America risks losing its competitive advantage. What we have is freedom and opportunity — and that attracts the most talented from everywhere else. Imagine if everyone of Chinese descent just vanished overnight. What would happen to the physics department at most universities? What would happen in Silicon Valley? What we risk losing is the talent that we've been able to recruit that has driven American entrepreneurial activity, scientific research and progress.

As president of Queens College in New York, how are you responding to these new guidelines on international students?

The chancellor [Félix V. Matos Rodríguez] of the CUNY system — we're part of a system — issued a powerful

For the past four years, Reyna Isabel Alvarez Navarro has reported to work at a crawfish processing plant in Crowley, Louisiana, bundled in two pairs of pants, two sweaters and a hat. She spent her days inside a freezing room where up to 100 employees worked elbow to elbow peeling crawfish.

The cold, crowded conditions weren’t new for the 36-year-old seasonal worker from northern Mexico. But it turned out to be the perfect setting for the novel coronavirus to spread: This spring, several dozen workers in the plant fell ill with COVID-19, including Alvarez Navarro.

Her working conditions also made it difficult for her to obtain medical care. Alvarez Navarro and other migrant workers from her region have come to Louisiana and other states in the US every year on H-2B visas for temporary foreign workers. They stayed for the crawfish farming season, which usually runs from January to July, and lived in employer-provided dorms along with up to 40 people. They were paid $2.50 per pound of peeled crawfish — amounting to $600 to $700 per week.

H-2B workers rely on their employers for things like transportation and housing.

H-2B workers’ visas tie them to their employer, explained Evy Peña, communications director with Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, a migrant worker’s rights group with offices in Mexico and the US. Workers rely on their employers for things like transportation and housing.

“And this means that their access to basic services, including food and medical services, depends on their job,” Peña said.

But Alvarez Navarro’s employer did not provide her with health care or help her obtain it — not even after placing her and many of her co-workers in quarantine once they showed symptoms of the coronavirus. Their effort to seek treatment kicked off a legal battle with their employer over dangerous work conditions for seasonal workers during the pandemic.

While the Trump administration is temporarily suspending some employment-based visas, visas for workers essential to the food chain are still being granted. Crawfish is one of Louisiana’s largest industries — and amid the pandemic, seafood workers are considered essential. The seafood industry could face some of the same problems the meatpacking and poultry industries saw earlier this year: meat shortages and plant closures after workers fell ill.

Related: Migrant farmworkers in US deemed essential — but lack basic protections

Alvarez Navarro started feeling ill in April. First came headaches. Then a cough and shortness of breath. Many others fell ill too. Most kept working, but at some point, Alvarez Navarro and many others became too ill to work.

Without access to treatment, Alvarez and another sick co-worker, Maribel Hernandez Villadares, decided to go to a hospital with the help of a friend who spoke English.

“And when the friend called our boss, the boss said he had reported us to immigration authorities because we had run away.”

“And when the friend called our boss, the boss said he had reported us to immigration authorities because we had run away,” said Hernandez Villadares, a 29-year-old worker with several crawfish harvest seasons under her belt.

Without a job, H-2B workers don’t have the authorization to work in the US — and that creates a domino effect, Peña said.

“So losing a job, losing their immigration status means that not only could they get blacklisted, but also their family members, maybe even their entire community. So when we're talking about a financial burden, it's not only individual, it's also collective,” Peña said.

Both Alvarez Navarro and Hernandez Villadares filed a whistleblower complaint against their former employer, Acadia Processors LLC, saying they were fired without a valid reason.

Acadia Processors LLC didn’t respond to an interview request from The World. But a spokesperson told the Lafayette Daily Advertiser newspaper the company didn’t fire the workers — rather, it said, they “fled the scene” and “abandoned their jobs.”

Related: For undocumented workers, demanding better work conditions could mean deportation

Complaints about worker safety and employer safety are common and have persisted duri...

This story is part of "Every 30 Seconds," a collaborative public media reporting project tracing the young Latino electorate leading up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond.

A few weeks ago, 18-year-old Izcan Ordaz joined his high school classmates for his first protest. They called for racial justice as part of a national wave of Black Lives Matter activism. A few days later, he marched again in Keller, an affluent suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, not usually known for protests.

But similar to many places across the country, residents turned out in larger numbers than expected. Keller police estimated 3,000 people showed up.

“I really assumed it was just going to be mostly young people, mostly a lot of minorities,” Ordaz said. “But when I got there I found that it was predominantly white Americans and lots of older families, lots of children.”

Izcan Ordaz, left, poses with a Fort Worth, Texas, police officer at a recent Black Lives Matter protest near his high school.

Courtesy of Izcan Ordaz

Ordaz, who recently graduated from Central High School in Fort Worth, will vote in his first presidential election this November. He falls somewhere in the middle of the US political spectrum: more conservative than his parents, but not too far to the right. Ordaz believes in capitalism and a free-market economy. And two major recent events — the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests — are shaking up how he views US politics.

Back in April, Ordaz’s biggest concerns were getting through the pandemic, the state of the US economy and finishing high school virtually.

Related: This Latino teen voter worries about prom, graduation — and the economy

Now, the issue of racial justice is also top of mind. Ordaz said he felt compelled to do something after watching the viral video of a white Minnesota police officer press his knee into the neck of George Floyd, a Black man.

What happened to Floyd wasn’t right and was painful to watch, Ordaz said. Floyd’s death reflects a larger problem of racial injustice in the country, he added — and that’s why he’s speaking up.

“I think as young people living in the United States, it really is our job to start to step up and to really make the future of the United States go in a different direction.”

“I think as young people living in the United States, it really is our job to start to step up and to really make the future of the United States go in a different direction,” he said.

As a young Latino, Ordaz is part of a demographic that is changing the US — politically, culturally and demographically. Approximately every 30 seconds, a Latino in the US turns 18 and becomes eligible to vote. Latinos’ sheer numbers make them an important voting bloc: This fall, they could surpass Black voters for the first time, making them the largest racial or ethnic voter group after whites, according to the Pew Research Center.

Related: Every 30 seconds, a young Latino in the US turns 18. Their votes count more than ever.

Ordaz said it’s his generation’s responsibility to not commit the same mistakes made by previous generations. While he credits older generations for paving the way in the fight for racial equality, he believes his generation can do more.

He points to high-profile cases, such as the 1992 protests that erupted in Los Angeles after four police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King were acquitted at trial.

“This police brutality has been a recurring issue in the United States that hopefully by the time we get to our parents’ age will not still be an issue,” Ordaz said.

Max Krochmal, an associate history professor of history at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, said it’s promising to see a new wave of activism around racial justice, which has taken cues from the 1960s civil rights movement.

That movement pushed the country as far as white Americans were willing to go, said Krochmal, who also chairs comparative race and ethnic studies at the university. In the '60s, Black activists marched and demanded equal rights. They won access to public accommodations, such as restaurants and movie theaters. And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Other changes around racial equality occurred in the 1960s, but the movement eventually plateaued, Krochmal said. And in some ways, he feels like the nation has moved backward.

“So I see the current Black Lives Matter movement as picking up that torch, as saying that the things tha...

Ernestina Mejía knew people were getting sick all around her this spring. She heard co-workers coughing in the bathroom at work. Others whispered about colleagues looking feverish.

Mejía wasn’t surprised. She works at Primex Farms, a dried fruit and nut producer based in Wasco, California, about 130 miles north of Los Angeles. Mejía, who moved to the US from Mexico a decade ago, sorted pistachios indoors on an assembly line, working in close proximity to others. Primex offered them no masks, no gloves and no protection against the coronavirus, she said.

Then, in mid-June, Mejía fell ill.

“I started feeling shivers and a terrible cough that wouldn’t let me sleep,” she said in Spanish.

Mejía, along with her husband and youngest daughter, had contracted the virus. So did 99 of Mejia’s coworkers, or about a quarter of Primex’s 400-person workforce, according to a tally by the United Farm Workers, a farmworkers’ union. One of her Primex colleagues, Maria Hortencia Lopez, 57, died on July 13 from COVID-19, according to friends and the UFW. Meanwhile, Mejía said, Primex did not acknowledge that people were falling ill.

Horrified at the outbreak, Mejía and other Primex employees took part in a one-day strike in late June to protest what they viewed as their employer’s failure to protect them. They also demanded an investigation by the state’s attorney general.

Their situation highlights the tightrope farmworkers must walk to protect their health and jobs while avoiding retaliation from their employers. Within weeks, at least 40 Primex workers, many of whom were active in the strike, were terminated, former workers told The World. Others said they feared the same fate if they spoke up.

From the start of the pandemic, warnings were clear that farmworkers — deemed “essential” to the nation’s food supply and thus exempt from lockdown orders — would be at high risk for COVID-19.

From the start of the pandemic, warnings were clear that farmworkers — deemed “essential” to the nation’s food supply and thus exempt from lockdown orders — would be at high risk for COVID-19. Across the US, an estimated 2.5 million farmworkers often work in cramped spaces, carpool to work and live in crowded homes. Many are immigrants and refugees. They’re part of an industry where safety and labor standards are notoriously weak, but many workers cannot leave their jobs because they’ll fall into poverty. The stakes are even higher for undocumented workers, whose legal status leaves them vulnerable to immigration enforcement.

Related: Farmworkers are now deemed essential. But are they protected?

Now, those early warnings are bearing out as outbreaks are reported at farms and food processing plants across the US. In July, dozens of farmworkers at a dorm-style housing facility in Southern California tested positive for the coronavirus. In southwest Florida, Doctors Without Borders has noted high rates of infections among farmworker communities and is providing them with COVID-19 testing and virtual medical consultations.

Employers’ lack of disclosure to employees about workplace infections is not unusual. Jesse Rojas, a business consultant Primex hired to speak to the media on its behalf, told The World the company has been following official safety guidelines and has been “very proactive in communicating with employees.”

In a statement to the local ABC television station, the company attempted to distance itself from the possibility that its workers were infected on-site.

“Primex cannot control the circumstances or monitor what employees are doing outside on their own time,” it said. “Primex is known as one of the cleanest plants in the industry.”

Mejía, along with several current and former Primex workers, also said that the farm did not provide masks for several months as the coronavirus surged across the country. When it did, cloth masks were provided for sale on-site for $8 each.

“That’s not something we can afford,” said Mejía, who earns $13 per hour. In the end, she said she purchased handmade masks f...