Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies Message from the Latin American and Latino Studies Director, Dr. Tulia Falleti:
Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff of the LALS community,
At LALS, we are deeply concerned by the announcement made by ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) yesterday, July 6, 2020, regarding international students in F1 and M1 visas taking online courses during the fall semester. We are sure this capricious and dangerous temporary exemption is affecting some of our LALS and affiliated program students. We want you all to know that although we don’t have any concrete information to share about measures taken or to be taken by our university at this time, we are working with the University administration to gather more information and as soon as any relevant information will come to us, we will be sure to share it with our community.
We also want you to know that at LALS we want to make sure that our international students' education continues uninterrupted over the fall semester and are ready to take any necessary measures to make that happen. Such measures could include offering at least one LALS seminar with presential components, offering independent studies with presential components, holding presential office hours, among other possibilities. So please, don’t despair and let’s stay united and informed. My deepest wish is that this whimsical and arbitrary measure will soon be reversed for the health and safety of all our students, faculty, and staff.
With warmest regards and in solidarity with our international students,
Tulia
Tulia Falleti
Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor of Political Science
Director of Latin American and Latinx Studies Program
Senior Fellow Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
University of Pennsylvania
https://www.polisci.upenn.edu/people/standing-faculty/tulia-falleti