the recently announced guidelines by the us immigration and customs enforcement ice that international students cannot undertake fully online courses in the coming semester if they wish to continue to stay in us is causing grief to families with agedout childrenthe main reason in case the international student is unable to transit to a university that offers hybrid teaching which includes inperson classes on campus he or she will have to leave us or face deportation in case this situation arises typically a child who has agedout of an h4 visa will have no immediate family back home in india to return toonce children turn 21 they can no longer continue with their h4 visa which is meant for dependents and is typically tied to their parents h1b work visa generally at this juncture they are still studying and have to transit to an f1 visa meant for international studentsan undergraduate student who reached out to toi said there were two choices available to him move to another city in the us where a larger university has announced in person classes or move back to india without his parents and start afresh each choice has its own inherent challengesrajiv khanna managing attorney at immigrationcom says one of the worst affected and least heard groups is the agedout children 21 or older of parents who have lived in the us for decades their parents have worked paid taxes and made the us their home the children know no other home except the us this group is placed in jeopardy most acutely because they have no foreign residence to return to what do they dofor aged out students the option of returning home is fraught with uncertainty some children who have now aged out of h4 have been raised in the us and likely have no more than a tangential relationship with families and cousins back home presuming a relative is able to provide care and housing for such students there is an enormous emotional and psychological toll being forced on a child who has to be forcibly separated from parents in the us i suspect what we will see is that parents faced with this horror of an option will either decide to leave the us as a family or the family will be forced to split up so one parent returns to india with the student child says kripa upadhyay managing partner at orbit law an immigration law firmnew york based immigration attorney cyrus mehta echoes the above sentiments the h4 children who are aging out will be very vulnerable the reason why they are in this situation is because of the green card backlogs for india otherwise they would have had green cards by now and potentially even become us citizens if they have been admitted in a school and already filed a change of status to f1 which is pending and have turned 21 they may not be able to backtrack and join another school that