U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will now be targeting international students in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, joined Boston Public Radio on Tuesday to explain why ICE, under the Trump administration, is turning its attention to STEM students.
"Individuals who're here on a student visa and have a STEM degree are then able to apply for a training visa," Noorani said. "ICE is saying they're going to start to conducting site visits to make sure that those individuals are actually going through a training program. The ultimate goal of this administration is to slash legal immigration."
Noorani said that ICE is hurting our economy by not effectively using its resources.
"I think we should have ICE pursue employers that are exploiting immigrant workers instead of going after engineers who're trying to learn a trade that is gong to serve our economic best interest," he said. "This incredible lack of prioritization is harming us in more ways than we can imagine."
