USA - A Jamaican immigration attorney in the United States (US) believes the Trump admin-istration is headed for a major legal showdown with universities there as the slashing of student visas threaten their funding. Attorney-at law Oliver J. Langstadt said the revocation of hundreds of visas by the US State Department since January will undoubtedly impact how universities operate, with fees from international students making up a significant portion of the budget for many. Added to that, he said many of the revocations may be in breach of the US Constitution, ...
citing a violation of the First Amendment which, he said, gives legal foreigners on US soil the same rights as citizens, including protected speech.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Langstadt, who is based in Florida. “Initially, they scored some points with their political base, but I do think the schools are going to start pushing back. I anticipate litigation because, as I said, I think it’s clashing with the Constitution. If these students are simply expressing themselves through freedom of speech or freedom of expression, they have the right to do so,” he told The Gleaner.
He said those actions by themselves should not be enough to revoke the students’ visas. However, just over a week ago, during a White House briefing, when asked about what several attorneys – including at the American Immigration Lawyers Association – have described as the “unprecedented” revocations of international students’ visas, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce would not give a definitive answer.
“We’ve never gone into the details of the visa process. We don’t discuss individual visas because of the privacy issues involved. We don’t go into statistics or numbers; we don’t go into the rationale for what happens with individual visas. (Jamaica Gleaner/AP)
