Boston judge blocks four-year cap on student visas a day before it was due

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday stopped a Department of Homeland Security rule that would have capped how long foreign students, exchange visitors and journalists may stay in the United States. The rule was due to take effect on Tuesday. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, a George W. Bush nominee sitting in Boston, granted a postponement under Section 705 of the Administrative Procedure Act. He scheduled another hearing for 2 October and refused the government's request to limit the order to the named plaintiffs.

The July rule would have replaced "duration of status" for F academic students, J exchange visitors and I foreign media representatives with fixed admission periods. F and J holders would have been admitted for their programme length, subject to a four-year maximum and a 30-day departure window. Anyone who needed more time would have applied to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. A refused extension would have been unappealable. I-class journalists would have been admitted for no more than 240 days at a time. Reporting on the final text said Chinese journalists would have received 90 days, with 90-day extensions.

The rule would also have restricted a second degree at the same level, a change of field, and a transfer between universities. Those clauses would have hit doctoral students hardest. A four-year cap does not cover a standard American PhD.

Plaintiffs who sued on 18 August included NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, the American Federation of Teachers, United Auto Workers Local 2322 and The NewsGuild-CWA. Saylor wrote that the likely harm was large and that the government's reasons were "exceptionally weak." He said the claim that a four-year cap would protect national security "borders on the absurd" and that officials had not explained how the cap would stop visa fraud. He also wrote that damage to higher education and to the US economy was "likely to be catastrophic," with costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars at research universities if enrolment fell.

Duration of status has been the working system for decades. A student admitted for a degree stays until the degree is done, plus a short grace period, as long as the school certifies enrolment. Journalists on I visas have been able to remain for years while assigned to a US bureau. The July rewrite would have moved both groups onto a clock that DHS, not the university or the newsroom, would control.

The order does not decide the merits. It keeps the old system in place while the case proceeds. Universities that had already begun rewriting offer letters and I-20 forms now have a pause until at least early October. News organisations that rotate foreign correspondents through Washington and New York keep the longer I-visa practice for now. DHS can still defend the rule at the next hearing. It can also rewrite the record to answer Saylor's points about fraud and security. Until one of those things happens, a student who started a six-year doctorate under duration of status remains on that footing.

The practical stake for India, China, South Korea and Nigeria, the large sending countries, is enrolment planning for 2027 rather than for this week. Admissions offices cannot sell a programme whose immigration clock ends before the dissertation. That is the fact the injunction preserves for one more cycle.