Ivy League and Immigration Policies

There’s a great piece in “The Brown Daily Herald” that delineates what Ivy League schools are doing to protect undocumented students.

There was a fantastic piece yesterday in “The Brown Daily Herald” by Priyanka Podugu in which she outlines precisely how Ivy League schools are helping undocumented students and students from countries the Trump administration has included on travel bans continue to pursue their educations. The piece, entitled “Ivy League works to assist students in face of threatening immigration policies” draws attention to how certain schools have fought back against the administration. As but one example, Princeton is lobbying to preserve the DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program) so that undocumented students can attend classes without worrying they’ll be hauled off by ICE before their professor’s office hours.

As Podugu writes, “Ivy League schools, including Brown, have also allocated legal resources to undocumented students who may need them, as well as to international students from the six Muslim-majority countries listed in Trump’s most recent executive order on immigration…Some universities go so far as to guarantee legal representation to their students. In a column written in the Yale Daily News after the election, President of Yale Peter Salovey wrote that Yale was ‘committed to making sure that our students who face legal action as a result of any changes in the government’s stance on immigration enforcement have legal representation, and the University will provide resources to help those students.’…Cornell has also used legal clinics available through its law school to provide affected students with legal representation…Harvard, Columbia and Cornell also offered know-your-Rights presentations. Corral said he and HIRC staff members had hosted several know-your-rights presentations on campus and off campus, which “initially focused on rights surrounding international travel and took the form of town hall style forums.” They have also hosted general know-your-rights presentations on immigration law.”

The list of actions taken by the eight Ivy League schools to combat measures threatening the ability of undocumented students — students like Larissa Martinez — and students from nations included on travel bans is quite exhaustive and we applaud each of these schools for choosing to take a stand in support of these young people.” As we have articulated many times on the pages of our blog over the course of this year, we do not believe attempts to ban young people from certain countries will deter international applicants from applying to America’s most selective universities. Will students be deterred and have they already been deterred from applying to less selective American universities? Yes. But at the most selective schools, we do not in any way anticipate a drop in applications.

And let us remember that international students on American college campuses help American students subsidize their college educations. Without these students, many American young people wouldn’t be able to attend our nation’s elite universities.

While you’re here, what are your thoughts on the immigration policies of the Ivy League schools? Let us know by posting a Comment below.