The ‘swap’ that can save your US student visa

Media student Madison Biaglow (21) of University of Texas didn’t hesitate to put her name on the “swap” sheet when she saw it. The spreadsheet is a crowd-sourced repository of US domestic students offering their courses that have on-site classes to international students who need them to stay on in the US.
Biaglow says this was the least that she could do. “I became really close friends with two people, one from Brazil and the other from India. I realised that in the last one week they have been in undeniable stress. So I offered my classes on the swap sheet, both to stand in solidarity with my friends, and to hopefully help a student that really does need it,” she says.
The Trump administration’s new rules for international students for the forthcoming fall semester (September to December) require them to attend in-person classes to keep their visas. Many US universities have scaled back on or dispensed with on-site classes due to the pandemic, so many foreign students, including over 2 lakh Indians, are in a quandary. Many are opting for courses that may be irrelevant to their study but allow them to take on-site classes. Others who can’t find a place could swap classes with others.
Sumana Kaluvai (22), who runs a Facebook group called H-4 Hope that offers support to students on H-4 and L-1 visas, created the “swap” sheet as a bid to crowd-source help after panicky Indian students and parents contacted her. “I realised that it would be very difficult for many students to continue with their student status in the US unless they were able to attend in-person classes,” she says.
Kaluvai, who graduated from University of California (UCLA) last year, created the Google spreadsheet and posted it on her social media accounts asking for help to amplify it. The following morning, she discovered that not only had the sheet been shared across universities, but it had already crashed after a million edits from desperate students trying to register their details.
With the help of Instagram handles @sanjose_strong, @community_equity_ and two web developers, the group set up a website called Support Our International Students (sois.us) within a day. The website brings together domestic students offering their courses and internationals looking for swaps.
UCLA political science students Yuliana Barrón Perez and Noah Hernandez saw Kaluvai's spreadsheet and decided to spread the word. “I decided to make a flyer to spread the word on my @community_equity_ page and from there is where it picked up momentum,” Perez says. The Insta handle and website have now become a hub for exchanging information on swapping courses, on-campus class lists, petitions seeking change in rules and much more.
Sitting in her Mumbai home, 23-year-old Sakshi Chavan's day is full of questions. “What if we are expected to pack-up and leave? Will I have to fly back during the peak of the pandemic? Will we be able to return ever,” she wonders.
As a student pursuing a biotechnology master’s at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Chavan had moved to the US a year earlier. But given the current uncertainty, she is eyeing an undergraduate-level course in programming that her university will offer in fall. “My department is not offering any on-site classes. This leaves me with no option but to choose irrelevant classes just so that I can go back to the US and keep my F-1 visa,” Chavan says.
The cost burden of the new course aside, Chavan also fears that as a graduate research assistant, she will not just be deprived of valuable laboratory research time but also a career in the US.