Posted on 08/20/2006 5:09:36 PM PDT by PghBaldy
MANHATTAN, Kan. - On a recent afternoon at Kansas State University, a familiar set of late-summer rituals were under way. Piccolo and tuba players practiced their formations in clusters on the lawn, and fraternity hopefuls started Rush Week.
This semester, the central Kansas agricultural powerhouse was also preparing for its first-ever celebration of Ramadan to welcome the newest members of its student body: 150 students from Saudi Arabia.
This school year, college towns from Florida to Oregon will host an estimated 15,000 new Saudi students, nearly all of whom have full scholarships paid for by the Kingdom's royal family. They're part of a new exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah last year that will soon quintuple the number of Saudi students studying in the United States.
The U.S. State Department sees the exchange as a way to build ties with future Saudi leaders and young scholars at a time of unsteady relations with the Muslim world. The Kingdom says it will help stem unrest at home by schooling the country's brightest in the American tradition.
And public universities are eager for the tuition dollars.
"The Saudi scholarship program has definitely heightened our interest in that part of the world," said Kenneth Holland, Kansas State's associate provost for international programs. "Not only are the students fully funded, but they're also paying out-of-state tuition."
Many scholarship holders have already spent a year in the U.S. studying English, and are excelling in their studies, by most reports. But one former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security says efforts to fast-track educational diplomacy with the Muslim world should bear scrutiny, unless the government can ensure the proper safeguards are in place.
Industrial engineering student Marwan Al-Kadi grew up in Medina, the site of one of Islam's holiest shrines. After four years studying in the U.S., he's shared Thanksgiving turkeys with friends in Abilene and wears his dark hair long and curly, a bit like a character from "That 70s Show.
"As an advice, my dad told me to pick a small town so I came to Manhattan," he said, lounging in a cafe near campus, as his cell phone rang intermittently. "My English was messed up when I came. But there are very kind people here."
Al-Kadi said the government scholarship gives him about $31,000 per year to study and pay for a room in a house he shares with three other students. Saudi Embassy spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir said 90 percent of the 10,229 Saudi students the U.S. State Department has registered for this school year will also get scholarships.
By January, U.S. government officials say the program will expand to 15,000, which means Saudi Arabia will send more foreign students to the U.S. than Mexico or Turkey.
"This is a critically important bilateral relationship," said Tom Farrell, a deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department. "It's an opportunity to increase understanding of Saudi Arabia for the United States and of the United States for Saudi Arabia."
Kansas State administrators say common misperceptions about the oil-rich nation make it crucial to create a tolerant environment for Arab and Muslim students, who have been singled out for scrutiny and have been the focus of new laws compromising their civil liberties since September 11.
Before then, Saudi visa applicants were allowed to bypass the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh by submitting their applications to preapproved travel agencies, which forwarded them onto the consulate for approval or rejection. Three of the 15 Saudi terrorists used that program, dubbed "Visa Express," to enter the U.S.
"Since then, everything has changed," said Saudi government spokesman Al-Jubeir. "There are long lines to wait for a visa. Once they get in to a university here, they are checked and rechecked."
In 2002, Congress mandated that the Department of Homeland Security create the "Visa Security Officer" program in consular offices in Saudi Arabia. That would bump up security by allowing counterterrorism officials to check visa applications against lists of known or suspected terrorists, said Clark Kent Ervin, who took over as the department's Inspector General in 2003.
That same year, Congress also instituted the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System or SEVIS, which monitors all foreign students' activities - including where they live, whether they go to class, and whether they finish their studies.
All foreign students are tracked on that program, which Kansas State administrator Holland said made him feel "very comfortable."
So after a formal reception with Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. last semester, Kansas State officials sat down with diplomats to plan a trip to the Saudi Embassy in Washington to review more qualified students' files.
"We'll provide you with an office, there will be secretaries there to help you," Saudi cultural attache Mazyed Ibrahim Almazyed told the group. "You can have people bring you all the files. You'll be right there and we can show you what we have."
Kansas State University President Jon Wefald nodded his head.
"This is going to get us right through the State Department," he said.
"Plan on spending at least two days there," he told the department heads around the table.
"Don't forget the real decision makers, for example the local representatives in Congress," said Almazyed.
Last year, the Government Accountability Office presented Congress with a report on security in U.S. consular offices in Saudi Arabia. According to the GAO, the 10 temporary Visa Security Officers sent there in 2004 lacked any specialized training in counterterrorism, fraud detection and interview techniques.
By summer 2005, DHS had hired and trained four permanent employees for the post, but only two of them spoke Arabic. A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of DHS, said all VSOs are now trained in visa security and that many staffers had 10 years experience in law enforcement. The department offers language training only "as necessary," he added.
Former DHS inspector general Ervin cites that as one of several ways in which the U.S. has mismanaged counterterrorism efforts since September 11 in his book, "Open Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack."
"The Department of Homeland Security is so inept and the VSO program is in its infancy, so fraud is entirely possible with students or anyone applying for visas from Saudi Arabia," he said.
The GAO reports the VSO program has expanded to Pakistan, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. DHS spokesman Dean Boyd said he could not provide details about its reach.
The electronic monitoring program, SEVIS, appears to be working well, though the blips it's caught recently illustrate the cultural gulf between the exchange students it tracks and their American hosts.
In May, two Saudi scholarship students monitored under SEVIS were held in solitary confinement in a county jail after riding a public school bus they thought would take them to their English classes at the University of South Florida.
"They thought they were allowed to ride it to take it to the university and people were making accusations like this was a dry run for a real terrorist attack," said Ahmed Bedier, director of the Tampa, Fla., office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "These youth are paying the price for things that they have no connection to. They're going to be the future in Saudi Arabia."
For Allan Goodman, president and CEO of the Institute of International Education in New York, the new bilateral agreement is a "tremendously positive" step toward person-to-person diplomacy.
"These 15,000 students will really jump start education and that will be a great addition to the Kingdom," said Goodman. "At its base, it's about mutual understanding."
Which Americans happily subsidize at the pump which goes back to commie professors to educate males from other countries who will blow up our children. My head might explode. Maybe it just did.
Which begs the question ... by what criteia are these 'stoonts' chosen in Saudi Arabia?
Are these the best and brightest, chosen for academic excellence?
Those that show a special interest in America and our values?
State lottery?
Lincoln bedroom donations?
We can have the program explained to us in a way we accept it .. but ... I want to know whom is getting in and why them and not others?
"Schools compete for thousands of Saudi students"
To paraphrase a popular advertising slogan, "Schools Compete ... We Lose"
I wonder how many are chemistry majors.
That's what it says. The middle east was a garbage dump prior to the discovery of oil and the construction of infrastructure to get the oil out of the ground, etc. Basically, the place was backwards so this date is about right.
Meanwhile, American kids can't get into these schools......
The saudis shouldn't be here, they shouldn't be in our heartland, they should be in SAUDI. With all their money, they can build schools there, WHY come here?
And this being "brokered" by our President and King Abdullah ... if true ... stinks to high heaven.
Is there any aspect of our country that is not up for sale?
Why don't we show the Saudis how to build their own colleges in their own country?
PING.
Selling out our country for money. Why doesn't this surprise me from academia?
More Arabs, guess we haven't reached our quota /s
In Texas state schools the tuition for foreign students is only slightly higher than in-state, but the tuition for out of state Americans is way higher. I think they add like a 75$ dollar "foreign student fee" per semester hour, but if you're just from Oklahoma you pay more than double the in-state charge.
Here at K-State we are fully integrated to the military-industrial complex....hehe.
Gen. Meyers is moving here, we have just created the Security Studies MA and are working on the Ph.D, a first in the nation.
We are also home to Agri/Bio-Warfare research. They just sealed off the top floor to one of my favorite buildings. (The floor doesn't even exist in the elevators or stairwells anymore...hehe. It's like it never existed. But last semester when they were doing the work I was asking the guys about it, sure enough, it's DHS.
And yes, we have a steady supply of soldier/students from Riley. We also have a major contigent of Air Force officers on campus here. Some foreign military come, but mostly from developing/Mid-East nations. You'll get Sudanese officers, Egyptians, Jordanians...
As for the Jihadist among us, I'm sure there are some. But there were some before we made the KSU campus "Saudi friendly". (You should have seen the Presidents visit last spring...
But the big push for this came last spring when the Saudi Ambassador came for a visit. These guys drop massive amounts of cash, and it is a little disconcerting to see the well armed Saudi security guys bossing our cops around, but hey, anything for diplomacy and donations.
I was there for the big shin-dig in the Union when the umma came out of the woodwork to visit the ambassador. The universities love int'l student for the cold cash the generate. Many of these students are not jihad material. Some probably are. Most are simply pleased as hell to be in America. This is party time for them....Culture shock is an issue, though.
One funny story-a couple of Saudi students live in my apartment complex here in Manhattan, KS. They didn't understand the laundry room. They had never seen such a thing. And when I explained that they could do their own laundry while watching baseball they were shocked and amused. It seems these guys had never done laundry, or any other housekeeping for that matter. The were mildly preplexed when they realized that as young men in an American colege they would have to take care of themselves.
Within a week they had muslim girls over to clean their apartment, cook for them and do their laundry. I think this is one of the services provided by out big new Islamic Center next to campus...hehe.
Oh well, they pay in cash, and if they never go to class and spend their days in the Islamic Center who really cares, right? hehe
Notice how university administrators go overseas to RECRUIT foreign students.. This has been going on for decades. Job security for the leftist academics.
15 of 19.
Did you have to explain indoor plumbing and showers, too?
Some foreign military come, but mostly from developing/Mid-East nations. You'll get Sudanese officers, Egyptians, Jordanians...
It's US military policy and has been for almost 40 years that any foreign national attending a US military training course MUST graduate, even if they failed to meet course standards. I had a few in my Infantry Officers Basic Course (IOBC) at Fort Benning in 1980. We had a few from Upper Volta or some place like that. Some of those went to Ranger school and got their tabs. Story goes that waaaaay back when, a foreign student flunked out and when he got home he was summarily executed for bringing national shame by failing.
Oh well, they pay in cash, and if they never go to class and spend their days in the Islamic Center who really cares, right? hehe
I care. If they're in class it can pretty well be certain they're not actively plotting a terrorist attack. On the other hand...in the Islamic center...that's not necessarily the case....right?
If no one else got it, I did. Thanks for a good line! :o)
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