Visas have been restored to 13 University of Connecticut students whose visa revocations were announced on April 22.
The visa revocations were first announced by UConn on April 10, and the number of students impacted were six undergraduate students, six graduate students and one recent graduate who was completing postgraduate training at UConn. All of the impacted international students were located at the Storrs campus.
UConn emailed a UConn Today statement to all UConn students with information on the restoration on Monday, stating that the terminated Student and Exchange Visitor Information System Records were restored.
“We have learned that all of the impacted students at UConn have now had their SEVIS records restored by the federal government, meaning absent some other unexpected change, they should be able to resume their studies and work at UConn uninterrupted,” the statement said.
The university administration said these revocations “threatened to cause serious disruptions in their academic careers.”
NPR reported that the government has restored the visas of hundreds or potentially thousands of students whose visas were abruptly revoked across the country. It is unclear if all or just some of the revoked visas nationwide, according to NPR.
Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, discussed the visa revocations and restorations in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition.
“More than 280 colleges and universities have been affected by these SEVIS terminations,” Mukherjee said. “The SEVIS terminations have taken place in at least 23 states. So, it’s large, high-profile institutions as well as much smaller public institutions that are being affected.”
She discussed the type of international students who had their visas revoked.
“What I’m seeing is that a large proportion of the students who are affected are from countries in the Middle East, from Asia and increasingly from Africa,” Mukerjee said. “What we’ve seen is that students who are affected have very minor criminal histories or nothing at all.”
UConn has said that they will support impacted students.
“UConn continues to work to provide support for all the impacted students and will share new information as it becomes available,” UConn’s statement said.