The in-office US President, Donald Trump, is in the news again, for the wrong reason, of course.

As per a report, plans are afoot from the incumbent Trump Government to come down hard on the community of the global students and guests, who allegedly overstay the legal validity of their visas, fuelling fears in the higher education community that Trump’s bellicose immigration laws will hamper university efforts to draw the finest brains from abroad.

Reportedly, in a policy memorandum, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently declared that it has plans to amend the way it calculates “unlawful presence” for the overseas people in the Student Visa and exchange scheme. It will also levy severer punishments — a maximum of a 10-year bar from the nation — for the graduates who allegedly overstay the legal validity of their visas.

Expectedly, the move has not gone down well will many and several higher education organizations and student advocates have condemned the policy that’s due to come into force in August. According to them, the change reveals the indiscriminate aspect of the government’s “America First” plans.

They claim that the president’s hostile immigration efforts are throwing out the country’s top scholars, who make a very good contribution of billions of dollars to the national economy, provide manpower to its leading research establishments, back its most high-skilled jobs, and contribute to the president’s own objective of consolidating the pipeline to Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering (STME) employment opportunities.

As per one of the critics, it’s crystal that in an effort to ‘enhance public safety,’ the government is keen to further shut the door on the academic talent. He added that it’s yet a new strategy which makes the nation less appealing to the talented students and researchers from across the globe.

Hitherto, Trump has, reportedly, devoted his energies on the country’s borders, and his toughest bombast has gang members on the firing line. Still, the president issued an executive order earlier indicating that the visa overstays would also not be spared.

The order says that several migrants who unlawfully enter the country and those who overstay or otherwise infringe the terms of their visas present a major danger to the public safety & national security.

As per an estimate, overstays is behind as many as 50% of the unregistered immigrants in the US, and the latest numbers made available by the concerned organization reportedly reveal that student & exchange guests had the topmost rate of overstay, 2.8%, among the non-immigrant callers to the country.

According to the concerned immigration authorities, the new strategy lines-up with the executive order. According to the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, the visa holders are given admission into the country for a particular object, and when that aim has been fulfilled, it’s expected that they will leave or get another, legal immigration position.

As per the available information, the proposed rules would cover the F & M visas. Global students use these to gain admission into academic and vocational establishments of higher education; and also the J-1 Visas, which permit students, professors and visitors to take part in the various short-term cultural exchange schemes.