Where did they go?

Foreign students seem few and far between this semester

Good Morning.

Here is a delightful picture of my current place of employment.

It’s the campus of Bentley University, found in Waltham, MA - a city of 80,000 some ten miles west of downtown Boston.

We’re a university city; the better known Brandeis is located on the other side of town.

I’m a professional driver, so I drive one of the campus shuttle busses. I’ve lived in Waltham for 30 years, so it’s a pleasure for me to drive the local route around the city and in and out of campus every day.

Bentley is a longstanding business school, and as such, many foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs here, to the tune of a historic percentage of somewhere around 15% of the total enrollment.

Many of those students actually work in various roles on the campus, doing whatever it is students do. My own son did this during his college career; he was an R/A at Johnson and Wales in Providence for 3 of his 4 years there, which got us a few dollars off tuition.

In any case - foreign students that are employed by their universities are required to get a Social Security Number for tax purposes. It is described thusly at the ssa.gov website:

Are you temporarily in the United States to attend a college, or a language, vocational, or nonacademic school? Do you have a nonimmigrant F-1, M-1, or J-1 student classification? Your school may ask you for your Social Security number (SSN). Some colleges and schools use SSNs as student identification numbers. If you don’t have an SSN, your college or school should be able to give you another identification number.

SSNs generally are assigned to people who are authorized to work in the United States. They are also used to report your wages to the government and to determine eligibility for Social Security benefits. An SSN will not be issued just for the purpose of enrolling in a college or school.

If you want to get a job on campus, you should contact your designated school official for international students. This official can tell you if you’re eligible to work on campus and can give you information about available jobs. Also, your school may approve certain limited off-campus employment, as permitted under Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regulations. If your school has authorized you to work either on or off campus, and you meet our eligibility requirements described in the next section, you can get an SSN.

My local route goes very close to the Social Security Administration office in Waltham. Last fall, I didn’t carry too many students that way - perhaps a dozen - but this year, the grand total has been zero.

I don’t know if that means returning students don’t need to do anything new, but it does indicate that apparently no new international students are working on campus this semester. I have my regular riders, and I know a few that I took last year.

Perhaps they took an Uber this time.

Or perhaps Trump’s xenophobia is winning.

Only time will tell.