Immigration policy and enforcement in the United States has experienced many ebbs and flows over our 244-year history as an independent nation, with policies either supporting or opposing the influx of new citizens at different stages of development.1 No political party can claim the proverbial “high ground” when immigration policy is viewed through a greater historical lens, but the Trump Administration campaigned on a hardline anti-immigrant platform and effectively executed several actions to restrict immigration into the United States throughout his term in office.2 The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) cataloged more than 400 executive actions under the Trump Administration that effectively reshaped the US immigration system, including actions on border protection, asylum case administration, immigration courts, and visa processes.3 While immigration policy changes in the United States have broad implications on the economy, culture, and everyday life of millions of people, leaders in pharmacy education may not always connect these larger policy actions to the specific needs of our more focused pharmacy education stakeholders (students, faculty, staff, etc). However, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced in July 2020 that students who were enrolled in schools that were shifting to online-only education because of the coronavirus identified in 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic would not be eligible to retain their student visas and could be subject to deportation procedures unless they were attending at least one in-person class, immigration policy became a major priority for higher education leaders.4 While this rule was revoked shortly after, this action and the preceding pattern of immigration restriction raises concerns for those who are involved in pharmacy education and brings about the question of how future immigration policies could impact pharmacy schools. In this commentary, we provide an overview of potential direct and indirect effects of more restrictive immigration policies on the system of pharmacy education within and outside the United States.
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