Belgium's Future Queen Hit by Trump's Ban on Foreign Harvard Students
The future queen of Belgium is one of thousands of foreign students whose studies are in jeopardy after the Trump administration revoked Harvard University's ability to enroll international students.
In a letter sent to the university on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration was canceling Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which allows universities to issue the forms students need to apply for visas to enter the U.S.
For students who are already enrolled, the cancellation creates a legal limbo because their visas haven't been canceled, but without access to the SEVP system, Harvard has no way of reporting that the students are following the terms of the visas, making them susceptible to deportation, The New York Times reported.
Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, who is heir apparent to the throne, is one of the students whose legal status is suddenly unclear, Reuters reported. The university has about 6,800 enrolled international students.
The 23-year-old Elisabeth just finished her first year at Harvard, where she is pursuing a two-year master's degree in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government.
'The impact of [the Trump administration's] decision will only become clearer in the coming days/weeks,' Belgian royal palace spokesperson Lore Vandoorne told Reuters. 'We are currently investigating the situation.'
The palace's communications director, Xavier Baert, added, 'We are analyzing this at the moment and will let things settle. A lot can still happen in the coming days and weeks.'
Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump's administration announced the move, Harvard filed a lawsuit seeking to block it, The New York Times reported. The suit accuses officials of a 'campaign of retribution' against the university and points to the president's social media posts attacking Harvard.
'We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,' Harvard president Alan Garber said in a statement Friday morning.
Administration officials have defended the move by saying they're trying to fight antisemitism on campus.
Last fall, the Belgian royal family went into full proud parent mode as Princess Elisabeth began her studies. The palace shared several photos of Elisabeth's first few days on campus, with the images credited to a fellow student named Max Bueno.
The royal previously earned an undergraduate degree in history and politics at Oxford University, where she enrolled under the name 'Elisabeth de Saxe-Coburg.' She's the oldest of four children born to King Philippe and Queen Mathilde.
In her letter to Harvard, Noem said the university was 'prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status for the 2025-26 school year,' and that 'existing aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university.' The F visas are for students and J visas are for visiting scholars and professors.
It wasn't clear how the transfers would work in practice or what the timeline for allowing them would be, considering the university's spring term officially ends on Monday and graduation is scheduled for next week. The summer term begins June 23.
It's also not clear that transferring would guarantee international students the ability to stay in the country, as Noem warned on Thursday that other university could be next.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Reform declares war on all gold-plated public sector pensions
A Reform UK government would radically overhaul gold-plated public sector pensions to stop them bankrupting Britain. Richard Tice told The Telegraph he would put everything on the table and end the taxpayer 'rip off' if his party won the next general election. Reform's deputy leader said the party would consider moving all public sector employees out of their 'Rolls-Royce' pension plans and into the defined contribution schemes almost all private sector workers have. Britain currently hands £54bn a year to public sector retirees and another £35bn in pension contributions to current state workers, with both groups entitled to guaranteed, inflation-linked payments for life. It comes after Reform pledged to axe defined benefit council pensions, which a recent Telegraph investigation revealed now costs some local authorities more than half of what they raise in council tax. Britain currently has more than three million public sector pensioners, the vast majority of whom are retired NHS workers, teachers, civil servants and members of the armed forces. Their schemes are all unfunded, meaning the contributions that come in from employers and employees are immediately used to pay current retirees, rather than being prudently invested to pay future pensions. However, contributions have fallen short of the amounts paid out, with taxpayers funding a £49bn shortfall over the past decade alone. Historically, they also haven't covered the cost of new pension rights built up by current workers. John Ralfe, a pensions consultant, calculated that the shortfall between contributions and future pensions was £208bn between 2013-23 – and it will be met by current and future taxpayers. The system, which would be illegal in the private sector, has built up pension liabilities running into the trillions. Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Tice said action was needed where successive governments had failed. He said: 'We've got to have these conversations over the next few years and wake people up as to why we're in such a financial mess. Public sector pay and benefits have soared and yet productivity has collapsed, and it's a catastrophe. 'I want to be honest with the country. I want to say, 'if we don't sort this out, this will be a major factor in the country going bankrupt'. It's that serious.' He also confirmed that Reform would consider moving every public sector worker into the type of defined contribution schemes that almost all private sector workers are members of. He added: 'Everything has got to be on the table. The old rule was that public pay was less than the private sector because they had a more generous pension scheme, but successive governments have lifted pay in the public sector and therefore the old deal is no longer valid. 'Bluntly, there's been a failure to be honest about this. The public sector has pulled the wool over the eyes of the taxpayer. We're going to talk about it for the next four years: that taxpayers are being ripped off and it can't go on.' Last week, Mr Tice said that Reform-controlled councils would stop offering the generous pension scheme to new employees and reduce pay rises for existing workers to balance out the cost of funding their retirements. The Local Government Pension Scheme, the largest funded scheme in the UK, already spends £15bn a year on paying pensions across Britain. A recent Telegraph investigation uncovered five local authorities that stuff more than half of their council tax into staff pension pots. Another 19 fork out more than a third, while 60 spend more than a fifth on funding the generous schemes. It came after a series of Telegraph revelations about the cost of public sector pensions. Last year, we calculated that Britain's current bill was £4.9 trillion, with each household on the hook for £173,000. In October, we reported that another £20bn would be added to taxpayer-funded pension payouts after they rose another 1.7pc following September's inflation figure. Last month, we showed how the latest public sector pay rise would cost another £1bn in pension contributions alone. We also revealed how taxpayers have been handed extra pension bills of £45bn for Royal Mail, £1.7bn for the Environment Agency and more than £300m for retired train drivers. Switching public sector workers to defined contribution pensions could send the taxpayer's annual bill plummeting to around £4.5bn, saving almost £28bn a year, calculations have shown. However, Barry McKay, of pensions firm Barnett Waddingham, warned it would be difficult to make the change. He said: 'If you move to defined contribution, those contributions paid by existing workers would go into a pot somewhere to be invested and grow for the benefit of each worker, but in doing so there would be no money coming in to pay existing pensions. 'The Treasury would have to find a huge amount of money to pay the existing pensioners from somewhere else, because they don't have the contribution income any more. That leaves a massive hole in the Treasury accounts.' He added: 'There is a problem that we're effectively stuck with defined benefit.' Neil Record, a pensions expert and former Bank of England economist, said: 'The only practical solution to public sector pensions' increasingly intolerable burden on taxpayers is for the Government to offer a cash alternative, as an option, to all public sector employees. 'My guess is that in return for an approximately 30pc pay rise, most public sector employees would choose to give up accruing new pension rights as long as their existing rights were fully honoured.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How the Vatican manages money and where Pope Leo XIV might find more
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The world's smallest country has a big budget problem. The Vatican doesn't tax its residents or issue bonds. It primarily finances the Catholic Church's central government through donations that have been plunging, ticket sales for the Vatican Museums, as well as income from investments and an underperforming real estate portfolio. The last year the Holy See published a consolidated budget, in 2022, it projected 770 million euros ($878 million), with the bulk paying for embassies around the world and Vatican media operations. In recent years, it hasn't been able to cover costs. That leaves Pope Leo XIV facing challenges to drum up the funds needed to pull his city-state out of the red. Withering donations Anyone can donate money to the Vatican, but the regular sources come in two main forms. Canon law requires bishops around the world to pay an annual fee, with amounts varying and at bishops' discretion 'according to the resources of their dioceses.' U.S. bishops contributed over one-third of the $22 million (19.3 million euros) collected annually under the provision from 2021-2023, according to Vatican data. The other main source of annual donations is more well-known to ordinary Catholics: Peter's Pence, a special collection usually taken on the last Sunday of June. From 2021-2023, individual Catholics in the U.S. gave an average $27 million (23.7 million euros) to Peter's Pence, more than half the global total. American generosity hasn't prevented overall Peter's Pence contributions from cratering. After hitting a high of $101 million (88.6 million euros) in 2006, contributions hovered around $75 million (66.8 million euros) during the 2010's then tanked to $47 million (41.2 million euros) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches were closed. Donations remained low in the following years, amid revelations of the Vatican's bungled investment in a London property, a former Harrod's warehouse that it hoped to develop into luxury apartments. The scandal and ensuing trial confirmed that the vast majority of Peter's Pence contributions had funded the Holy See's budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe. Peter's Pence donations rose slightly in 2023 and Vatican officials expect more growth going forward, in part because there has traditionally been a bump immediately after papal elections. New donors The Vatican bank and the city state's governorate, which controls the museums, also make annual contributions to the pope. As recently as a decade ago, the bank gave the pope around 55 million euros ($62.7 million) a year to help with the budget. But the amounts have dwindled; the bank gave nothing specifically to the pope in 2023, despite registering a net profit of 30 million euros ($34.2 million), according to its financial statements. The governorate's giving has likewise dropped off. Some Vatican officials ask how the Holy See can credibly ask donors to be more generous when its own institutions are holding back. Leo will need to attract donations from outside the U.S., no small task given the different culture of philanthropy, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Church Management Program at Catholic University of America's business school. He noted that in Europe there is much less of a tradition (and tax advantage) of individual philanthropy, with corporations and government entities doing most of the donating or allocating designated tax dollars. Even more important is leaving behind the 'mendicant mentality' of fundraising to address a particular problem, and instead encouraging Catholics to invest in the church as a project, he said. Speaking right after Leo's installation ceremony in St. Peter's Square, which drew around 200,000 people, Gahl asked: 'Don't you think there were a lot of people there that would have loved to contribute to that and to the pontificate?' In the U.S., donation baskets are passed around at every Sunday Mass. Not so at the Vatican. Untapped real estate The Vatican has 4,249 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value, according to the annual report from the APSA patrimony office, which manages them. Some 70% generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 10% are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2023, these properties only generated 35 million euros ($39.9 million) in profit. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue. But Ward Fitzgerald, the president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, which finances papal charities, said the Vatican should also be willing to sell properties, especially those too expensive to maintain. Many bishops are wrestling with similar downsizing questions as the number of church-going Catholics in parts of the U.S. and Europe shrinks and once-full churches stand empty. Toward that end, the Vatican recently sold the property housing its embassy in Tokyo's high-end Sanbancho neighborhood, near the Imperial Palace, to a developer building a 13-story apartment complex, according to the Kensetsu News trade journal. Yet there has long been institutional reluctance to part with even money-losing properties. Witness the Vatican announcement in 2021 that the cash-strapped Fatebenefratelli Catholic hospital in Rome, run by a religious order, would not be sold. Pope Francis simultaneously created a Vatican fundraising foundation to keep it and other Catholic hospitals afloat. 'They have to come to grips with the fact that they own so much real estate that is not serving the mission of the church,' said Fitzgerald, who built a career in real estate private equity. ___ AP reporter Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Bloomberg
42 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
UK Military Rhetoric Doesn't Match Fiscal Reality
Not long before World War I, HMS Dreadnought, a battleship that made all existing vessels obsolete, was launched at Portsmouth in the presence of the King-Emperor Edward VII. Fire-breathing patriots soon took up the cry, 'We want eight and we won't wait.' Winston Churchill, then a young home secretary in a government committed to spending more on welfare, wryly noted of the popular clamor for a naval race with Germany: 'The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight.' British debates about defense spending follow a familiar trajectory, although this time it's politicians, rather than civilians, insisting that more should be spent on firepower. A military revolution in warfare is underway, too. Drones, off-the-shelf technology far cheaper than Dreadnoughts, are being deployed to lethal effect on the battlefields of Ukraine and further afield - the daring 'Spider Web' raid last weekend destroyed as much as a third of Russia's strategic bombing force based thousands of miles away from Europe.
