Princeton’s continued scholarly excellence depends upon recruiting and retaining the very best talent from around the world as students, professors and visiting scholars.  With these goals in mind, we monitor changes to immigration law, regulations and policies and work with the University’s administration to ensure that Princeton’s views are heard by Congress and the executive branch.  Recent activities by the University in this area include:

• In February 2017, President Eisgruber and University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann organized a letter of 48 university presidents urging the White House to rectify or rescind an Executive Order that restricted travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries and closed the nation’s border to refugees from throughout the world. Princeton joined other universities in filing amicus curiae briefs supporting legal challenges to the original order and its successor.
• The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a wise and humane program that allows talented individuals, who were brought to the United States as children, to pursue educations and contribute positively to our society. President Eisgruber has urged Congress and the President on numerous occasions to continue this program and create a path to permanent residence and citizenship for these deserving young people. In November 2017, the University, one of our undergraduate students, and Microsoft filed a legal challenge to the termination of DACA.
• Immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan have faced the loss of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that allowed them to come to the United States to escape armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. In a February 2018 letter, President Eisgruber urged congressional leadership to preserve TPS recipients’ ability to work legally in the United States and the communities that have become their homes.  He followed that up with a May 2018 letter, in which he and Harvard President Drew Faust urged leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to advance legislation that would protect this population.
• President Eisgruber has asked the Trump Administration to reconsider proposed changes to the J-1 exchange visa and Optional Practical Training (OPT) programs that could prevent talented scholars from coming to or staying in the United States.