This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 9th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For international students studying in the United States, it's a precarious time.

If their universities do not offer in-person classes,

they'll have to return to their home countries.

President, for his part, is demanding the schools open this fall,

and schools already hemorrhaging money are trying to do the

right thing in weighing concerns about spreading coronavirus against worries of

losing more revenue. Cato's Alex Narasta discusses this latest immigration restriction and offers a few better

policy ideas.

The President is insisting one that schools must reopen in the fall while schools sort of I don't know if you'd call it

hemming and hawing I think it's probably pretty prudent a lot of the

discussions that they're going through and trying to come to a reasonable accommodation for students and still get young people the educations that they need.

And the other is that for international students who are in the US on student visas,

if their schools go online only, then those international students will have to leave the United States and cannot stay in the United States during the fall semester.

So these seem to be pretty strongly related and as you said

before we started recording they're so related it's an explicit statement from some folks in the White House.

That's right.

Ken Kucinelli, who is acting as head of DHS, stated explicitly that the reason for this is to try to persuade schools across the United States to open this fall and to take students.

And the reason why this has a good chance of succeeding if it's not blocked by the courts is that a substantial percentage of the revenue for American universities comes from foreign students.

So foreign students pay full price.

They do not get in state tuition.

...