A federal judge on Sept. 14 blocked a rule that would cap J-1 and other visas at four years, one day before it was set to take effect.
The Department of Homeland Security rule threatened to disrupt training for the roughly 16,000 international medical residents and fellows who train on J-1 visas at U.S. teaching hospitals each year. Foreign-born physicians make up 47.2% of the internal medicine workforce and the majority of physicians in geriatrics, sleep medicine and nephrology.
Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts postponed the rule’s effective date and preliminarily enjoined the department from implementing it, finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed in showing the rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act. He denied their broader request to vacate the rule outright, without prejudice, according to court documents reviewed by Becker’s.
Finalized July 17 and set to take effect Sept. 15, the rule would replace the decades-old “duration of status” system — which admits students and exchange visitors for the length of their program — with fixed terms of four years for F and J visa holders and 240 days for I visa holders, who are foreign journalists. Anyone needing more time would have to file a Form I-539 extension request, a decision the rule made discretionary and unappealable.
Many physician training programs run longer than four years. General surgery residencies take five years and neurosurgery takes seven, meaning affected trainees would have to secure a mid-training extension to finish.
Mr. Saylor was critical of the department’s rationale. The rule would give a single official the power “to cut short the academic, research or teaching activities of any non-U.S. citizen for no reason or any reason,” he wrote, with no possibility of appeal. He called the argument that the cap was needed for national security one that “borders on the absurd,” noting it rested on a handful of anecdotes the four-year limit would do nothing to prevent.
DHS acknowledged compliance costs of more than $250 million in the first year and quantified total costs of up to $448.6 million. It dismissed commenters’ warnings of steeper economic damage as “speculative.” A survey cited in the record by NAFSA: Association of International Educators found that 49% of current international students said they would not have enrolled under the fixed-term system. During a 32-day comment period, about 22,000 people responded, most in opposition.
The rule was challenged by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, NAFSA, the NewsGuild-CWA and labor organizations including the American Federation of Teachers and United Auto Workers. The injunction holds the rule in place pending resolution of the case on the merits.
