The ban on J is extremely weird and devastating. When I was in UC Berkeley a lot (all? most? idk) of non-citizen researchers and professors were on J. How will this work?

Disclaimer: I'm currently on H1B in the US, so I'm not unbiased.

The J ban only applies to specific J categories. It seems to still allow researchers/professors/students, but bans the shorter-term exchange-type uses of the visa: working-holiday, au pairs, camp counselors, etc. as well as K-12 teachers, professional trainees, and interns (like post-college corp internships).

Also 4-month tech internships at UWaterloo.

Isn't that in Canada, and thus unaffected?

many Waterloo students work in the US during their internships

Thus the resulting panic at https://www.reddit.com/r/uwaterloo/comments/hdzc8x/trump_ord...

> How will this work?

It will devastate US institutes of higher education if it is maintained over the long term, and merely cause massive damage over the short term. Which is part of the plan, no doubt; the political faction executing it isn't exactly know for it's fondness for the academy.

It is going to go extremely poorly. Guess we can't hire any non-US postdocs anymore with the exception of Canada/Mexico since they have a NAFTA visa that isn't on the list. I also suppose that if the ones we have leave the country and need their J-1 visa renewed, they will be stuck until 2021.

J1 has many different categories. Postdocs are usually on the research scholar/professor category of J1, which are not affected.

Technically NAFTA also ends this July, but it seems the replacement is mostly just NAFTA with a new name.