Confidence is definitely a thing.

Most of the students probably don't appreciate this self-inflicted drama in the first place.

No one really wins here.

The courts proved exactly the opposite. The system of checks and balances worked. I don't follow your assertion.

And even when they do, the fear and confusion caused in the meantime in a case like this is devastating to many thousands of people.

It is not normal nor good for an administration to be floating so many terrible and illegal ideas so regularly.

Depending on judges with lifetime appointments isn’t a good system.

Why could this decision be made in the first place by non elected officials? Why didn’t such a drastic decision have to be passed via the legislative process?

The legislature can stop pretty much any form of bad executive overreach, by passing a bill.

The problem is that (enough of) the legislature did not want to stop this.

I'm not that familiar with the structure of the US government, but I thought it was the opposite, and the executive has an approve list of powers rather than a deny list

Most of the time, laws are very vague and the specifics of the laws - the regulations - are written by government regulatory agencies. The president appoints heads of the regulatory agencies that are approved by the Senate (upper house).

Congress can pass a law that overrides a regulation or it can be struck down by court.

So the President by himself has limited power but he has a lot of influence over regulatory agencies based on who he appoints.

That's why it's not necessarily an overreach, but instead just an inhumane choice to not take special circumstances into account when choosing to execute a particular regulation.

The courts worked as a balance. But they can only do as much as the laws allow. The tendency of the executive is heard loud and clear. No serious student would want to jeopardize their lives in an environment and society that displays xenophobia.

I cannot explain it much better than this https://themargins.substack.com/p/the-international-student-...

> The number of international students enrolled in U.S. universities declined again in 2018-19, extending the slide in enrolled international students to a second year in a row.

> That’s one of the main takeaways from the 2019 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, which was released today by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2019/11/18/inte...

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However, the linked report starts out:

> The number of international students in the United States set an all-time high in the 2018/19 academic year, the fourth consecutive year with more than one million international students.

> The total number of international students, 1,095,299, is a 0.05 percent increase over last year, according to the 2019 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange.

From: https://www.iie.org/en/Why-IIE/Announcements/2019/11/Number-...

Don't get me wrong but do you always look at historical numbers to predict the future?

Honest question because I'm not a student of world politics: what countries have had consistently better governance over the last 20 years?

Every time some possibility comes to mind, I quickly recall a reason to cross it off the list.

Germany has a huge self-inflicted migrant crisis. New Zealand seems to be heading down that path.

The only Germans who worry about this so-called "migrant crisis" are those who make a living writing schadenfreude pieces for conservative American websites. You have been misled.

Besides, don't change the subject. We are talking about USA's massive failure. All three of these other nations have succeeded in dealing with this problem that has totally beaten us. Observing that they aren't sufficiently cruel to immigrants for your tastes doesn't change that fact.