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At first, the bar association for immigration attorneys began receiving inquiries from a couple students a day. These were foreigners studying in the U.S., and they’d discovered in early April their legal status had been terminated with little notice. To their knowledge, none of the students had committed a deportable offense.In recent days, the calls have begun flooding in. Hundreds of students have been calling to say they have lost legal status, seeking advice on what to do next.“We thought it was going to be something that was unusual,” said Matthew Maiona, a Boston-based immigration attorney who is getting about six calls a day from panicked international students. “But it seems now like it’s coming pretty fast and furious.”The speed and scope of the federal government’s efforts to terminate the legal status of international students have stunned colleges across the country. Few corners of higher education have been untouched, as schools ranging from prestigious private universities, large public research institutions, and tiny liberal arts colleges discover status terminations one after another among their students.At least 790 students at more than 120 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated in recent weeks, according to an Associated Press review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. Advocacy groups collecting reports from colleges say hundreds more students could be caught up in the crackdown. Students apparently targeted over minor infractions Around 1.1 million international students were in the United States last yeara source of essential revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid, and their ability to pay tuition often factors into whether they will be admitted to American schools. Often, they pay full price.Many of the students losing their legal status are from India and China, which together account for more than half the international students at American colleges. But the terminations have not been limited to those from any one part of the world, lawyers said.Four students from two Michigan universities are suing Trump administration officials after their F-1 student status was terminated last week. Their attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, Ramis Wadood, said the students never received a clear reason why.“We don’t know, and that’s the scary part,” he said.The students were informed of the status terminations by their universities via email, which came as a shock, Wadood said. The reason given was that there was a “criminal records check and/or that their visa was revoked,” Wadood said, but none of them were charged or convicted of crimes. Some had either speeding or parking tickets, but one didn’t have any, he said. Only one of the students had known their entry visa was revoked, Wadood said.Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges.But many students say they don’t fall under those categories. Students have filed lawsuits in several states, arguing they were denied due process.In New Hampshire, a federal judge last week granted a temporary restraining order to restore the status of a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College, Xiaotian Liu. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Wisconsin issued a similar order, ruling the government could not take steps to detain or revoke the visa of a University of Wisconsin-Madison gradate student. In a break from past, feds cancel students’ status directly At many colleges, officials learned the legal immigration status of some international students had been terminated when staff checked a database managed by the Department of Homeland Security. In the past, college officials say, legal statuses typically were updated after colleges told the government the students were no longer studying at the school.The system to track enrollment and movements of international students came under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement after 9/11, said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators. She said recent developments have left students fearful of how quickly they can be on the wrong side of enforcement.“You don’t need more than a small number to create fear,” Aw said. “There’s no clarity of what are the reasons and how far the reach of this is.”Her group says as many as 1,300 students have lost visas or had their status terminated, based on reports from colleges.The Department of Homeland Security and State Department did not respond to messages seeking comment.Foreigners who are subject to removal proceedings are usually sent a notice to appear in immigration court on a certain date, but lawyers say affected students have not received any notices, leaving them unsure of next steps to take.Some schools have told students to leave the country to avoid the risk of being detained or deported. But some students have appealed the terminations and stayed in the United States while those are processed.Still others caught in legal limbo aren’t students at all. They had remained in the U.S. post-graduation on “optional practical training,” a one-year periodor up to three for science and technology graduatesthat allows employment in the U.S. after completing an academic degree. During that time, a graduate works in their field and waits to receive their H-1B or other employment visas if they wish to keep working in the U.S.Around 242,000 foreigners in the U.S. are employed through this “optional practical training.” About 500,000 are pursuing graduate degrees, and another 342,000 are undergraduate students.Among the students who have filed lawsuits is a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student who is supposed to graduate on May 5, with a job offer to join the faculty. His attorney Charles Kuck said the student was likely targeted for termination because of an unpaid traffic fine from when the student lent his car to a friend. Ultimately, the violation was dismissed.“We have case after case after case exactly like that, where there is no underlying crime,” said Kuck, who is representing 17 students in the federal lawsuit. He said his law firm has heard from hundreds of students.“These are kids who now, under the Trump administration, realize their position is fragile,” he said. “They’ve preyed on a very vulnerable population. These kids aren’t hiding. They’re in school.”Some international students have been adapting their daily routines.A Ph.D. student from China at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said she has begun carrying around her passport and immigration paperwork at the advice of the university’s international student office. The student, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities, said she has been distressed to see the terminations even for students like her without criminal records.“That is the most scary part because you don’t know whether you’regoing to be the next person,” she said. __Seminera reported from Raleigh, N.C., and Keller reported from Albuquerque, N.M. The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Annie Ma, Makiya Seminera and Christopher L. Keller, Associated Press
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Yes, Spotify is down. Spotify users are reporting service outages on the music streaming desktop and mobile app. As of 8:50 a.m., U.S. users started experiencing technical issues with the app, with around 323 reports. By 9:05 a.m., reports had risen to more than 20,000 outages, and are about 40,000 outage reports at the time of publishing. Technical issues are mainly reported in the U.S. and Europe, with some additional reports in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, United Arab Emirates, and Israel. “We are aware of the outage and working to resolve it as soon as possible,” a Spotify spokesperson told Fast Company in a statement. “The reports of this being a security hack are completely inaccurate. For ongoing updates regarding this issue, please reference our @SpotifyStatus X channel.” Spotify issued an acknowledgement of the situation earlier at 8:45 a.m. via social media saying, “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!” The technical issues appear to impact the search option on the mobile and desktop app, with a message saying “couldn’t load the page.”
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Cloud-based designer platform Figma on Tuesday confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States, more than a year after a $20 billion deal to be acquired by Adobe was shelved due to regulatory roadblocks. Figma had been widely considered as a candidate to go public after antitrust regulators in Europe and Britain blocked Adobe’s deal in December 2023 in what would have been one of the biggest acquisitions of a software startup. Last year, Figma was valued at $12.5 billion after it closed a deal to allow its employees and early investors to sell their stake to new and existing investors. The U.S. IPO market, which made a strong comeback last year from a slew of high-profile listings, has been rattled by market volatility stemming from tariff-related uncertainty, with companies adopting a wait-and-see approach before proceeding with their stock market debuts. “Sentiment for the IPO market is relatively low and has been dampened by heightened market volatility stemming from a lack of policy clarity. Over the past few months, we saw a string of tech startups filing to go public, but many subsequently put their IPO plan on hold,” said Kaidi Gao, senior VC analyst at PitchBook. Figma, a design platform with both free and paid offerings, is used to create, share and test designs for websites, mobile apps and other digital products, boasts customers such as Adobe, Uber, Spotify and Alphabet’s search-engine giant Google. The company, co-founded by tech executive Dylan Field in 2012, is cash flow positive and has expanded its offerings to include a broader platform for team collaborations with artificial intelligence features. Jaiveer Shekhawat, Reuters
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