Phyllis Schlafly: What's Hiding Behind The Student Visa Scandal

Too Good Reports ^ | December 13, 2001 | Phyllis Schlafly

[Stand Watch Listen]

>A funny thing happened on the way to Senator Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) proposal to take a six-month time-out on issuing visas to foreign students in order to defend Americans from fraud and potential terrorists. She was backed into a corner by an unusual phalanx of well-dressed lobbyists on the warpath.

 From the highways and byways of America, the officials of private and public colleges and universities converged on Capitol Hill to kill this Feinstein proposal. They claimed that a moratorium on student visas would be "devastating" to universities and "wreak havoc on graduate schools."

Senator Feinstein's proposal for a time-out was eminently reasonable, but the universities had enough clout to get her to abandon it and substitute requiring development of an electronic database by October 26, 2003.

The U.S. State Department grants over a half million student visas a year even though student visas are known to be a tremendous source of fraud. Over the past decade, U.S. universities have enrolled 16,000 students from states that sponsor terrorism.

The U.S. has issued 4,000 student visas in Saudi Arabia alone, and 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 held Saudi visas. A U.S. Commerce Department employee was just criminally charged with accepting bribes to grant visas to Saudi residents.

Do you feel safer now since the Democrats insisted on making all airport security guards federal employees?

One of the criminals convicted of the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center was in the United States on an expired student visa. Wouldn't you think that, at least since 1993, it should have been a priority of law enforcement to tighten up on student visas?

In 1996, Congress called for the establishment of a government database to track foreign students, but it never became operative because of opposition from the universities. This issue didn't appear on our government's radar screen until after 9/11.

The suspected ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, came into the U.S. on a tourist visa, which he converted to a student trainee visa in July so he could attend flight training school. Hani Hanjour, the hijacker who is believed to have helped steer the plane into the Pentagon, was on a student visa but never reported to class.

One day in October, 14 Algerians landed at the Dallas airport and on another day in October, 14 Syrians arrived, and all were allowed to proceed to a private flight school for training. We'd like to know how and why visas are issued for flight training schools, which proved so deadly on 9/11.

Nobody swallowed the line that the university lobbyists were just seeking to spread democracy, promote knowledge, and forge ties with future leaders abroad. Let's do a reality check on their motives.

The universities are making so much money out of foreign students that they don't care what dangers they pose, what fraud is involved, or whether the students exit the U.S. when their visa expires. The universities don't even want to be bothered with the nuisance of reporting to the government when the foreign students arrive and depart.

Has any student in your family had a hard time gaining admission to an elite U.S. college? How does it make you feel to know that 547,667 places in U.S. colleges were occupied by foreign students in the academic year just ended, and the number has been rising dramatically?

The universities want the foreign students because they usually pay the full tuition, while 84 percent of American students attending private universities receive some sort of financial aid.

In lobbying against Feinstein's original proposal, the universities argued that their graduate programs in the sciences, engineering and math would collapse without the foreign students because these courses can't be filled with enough qualified American students. American students rank poorly on international science, engineering and math competitions, and that is reflected in the smaller number who take those subjects in college.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress just reported the results of its 2000 tests. Only one in five high school seniors has a solid grasp of science, only half even know the basics, and 12th graders scored lower than those taking the test in 1996.

What a terrible reflection on the U.S. school system! High school graduates (including those who get A's because of grade inflation) are not qualified to take college courses in science, engineering and math.

The provost of Carnegie Mellon University said, "We have tremendous difficulty in getting American citizens to apply for, enroll and be qualified in many of our engineering and science areas." Carnegie Mellon granted 47 percent of its doctoral degrees in 1999 to foreign students.

The number of student visas should be drastically reduced and controls tightened, and none should be issued to states that sponsor terrorism. Student visas should also be conditioned on the applicant's ability to speak English and a sworn disavowal of terrorism.

[GingisK]

The number of student visas should be drastically reduced and controls tightened

With fewer American kids entering college, our university system would collapse. Don't lose sight of the fact that these schools accept foreign students into positions not filled by Americans. This is especially true of the technologies.

[Whilom]

What university system would collapse?

[EggsAckley]

The number of student visas should be drastically reduced and controls tightened, and none should be issued to states that sponsor terrorism. Student visas should also be conditioned on the applicant's ability to speak English and a sworn disavowal of terrorism.

I'd like to see the above statement etched in stone. It is beyond ludicrous that the security of our nation should be compromised just to appease the likes of University administrators. Let the Universities collapse, they can re-structure, clean out their bloated personnel rosters, and start acting like educators again, instead of corporate moguls.

[Stand Watch Listen]

With fewer American kids entering college, our university system would collapse.

??? I'm confused. I thought that college enrtollment was at an all time high. Thought generations X and Y were filling up the universities. Especially now that we have been entering a recession since Spring 2000.

Don't lose sight of the fact that these schools accept foreign students into positions not filled by Americans. This is especially true of the technologies.

Hmmmm... I was under the impression that the Universities welcomed foreign students as many paid full out-of-state tuition rates and many did not attend classes, thus did not take up classromm space. A financial bonaza for the universities.

OTOH... it does seem the sciences are loaded up with foreign students as so many American students are not prepared for the disciplines of the science curriculums.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #5 In America's universities, the best money-making major is business. Foreign students all pay out-of-state tuition. Many comes. Even from Europe. Very steady source of income. On the other side of coin, some engineering and science discipline survives on Foreign students. It is not that American students do not come to these area. But their numbers are insufficient to fill up the capacity built for baby-boomers. For example, metallurgy dept. cannot survive without many foreign students. It is not a sexy money-making discipline like Comp. Sci. In social science and humanity area, it is all mostly made up of local population, though. All those liberals. I have to admit , though, that most of CS majors are liberals, too. There may be a few libertarians but almost no conservatives.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

Schaffly claims the U's want foreign students because they pay full tuition and hints that foreigners are taking places at "elite" U's away from Americans. U's counter that they can't fill graduate programs with Americans. And Schaffly turns around and agrees with them. It's like watching a tennis match where one of the players can't see the ball.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I think they meant graduate programs. Foreigners have been a significant percentage of graduate students in the US for at elast the last 20 years.

I say let a couple of them collapse. If Americans aren't benefiting from these programs, do we care if they exist? It's not like college costs are stable now anyway.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

FWIW, at the very best U's, graduate programs don't charge foreigners tuition. They _pay_ for them to come study, often asking them to TA in return for a tuition waiver and a stipend. The payoff for the U is not the tuition charged to foreign graduate students, but the cheap manpower to teach large numbers of undergraduates. And the incentive for the U's would be the same even if we banned foreign students all together.

[boris]

"The number of student visas should be drastically reduced and controls tightened"

Actually there should be a complete halt to issuance of visas for any purpose for citizens of nations which support terror.

All enemy aliens (defined as non-U.S.-citizens who are citizens of terror-supporting states) who are here on student visas, tourist visas, and green cards should be deported yesterday.

--Boris

[ConsistentLibertarian]

America could do worse than absorb the talent coming out of Carnagie Mellon's Ph.D. program in computer science. We're skimming the cream of the crop in India, for example, and putting all those watts into the American bulb. America hasn't had it so good since Jewish physicists fled Germany in the 30's. And there was pretty much the same reaction then.

[independentmind]

In lobbying against Feinstein's original proposal, the universities argued that their graduate programs in the sciences, engineering and math would collapse without the foreign students because these courses can't be filled with enough qualified American students.

And the answer to this problem is to bring in a never ending supply of foreigners? What an incredibly short-sighted solution.

[gjenkins]

"Don't lose sight of the fact that these schools accept foreign students into positions not filled by Americans."

Our university system would collapse if we took out all of the foreign students. As long as it looks like our public university system is doing its job theneverything is a-ok. We should keep fooling ourselves that 1. we are educating our kids 2. we are benefitting from our research 3. we are strengthening our industry. Self deception is the answer.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

It's a strength of America that it sucks up talent from around the world. If you were graduating with a Ph.D. in pure math (algebra, analysis, topology) in the early 90's, you had a heck of a time finding an academic job because there were tons of brillians Russian, Ukranian, Polish, Czech and Hungarian mathematicians who could finally flee to America and they made for stiff competition. We're way better off having these people in the US. The level of education in India is much higher in the US, they have a long history of producing top notch talent, and their culture supports it. When Carnagie Mellon brings these people to the US to do a Ph.D. on computer science, and they stay, we benefit. The entreprenurial engine of the world's greatest economy is driven by capital -- money to invest and brains innovate.

[gjenkins]

"We're skimming the cream of the crop in India, for example, and putting all those watts into the American bulb."

They are bright. They do not stay here ... or at least I would bet most do not. They go home and start developement companies which large corporations (like the one I work at) contract to do developement work. Who wants to keep around overpriced US engineers.

[independentmind]

The entreprenurial engine of the world's greatest economy is driven by capital -- money to invest and brains innovate.

You need to stop thinking in purely economic terms. The greatest strength a nation has is its people; we will reap the consequences for failing to realize the importance of an educated citizenry.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

Most stay if they can. We can test that theory by relaxing immigration rules and giving a green card to any foreigner who earns an advanced degree from an American U in math, engineering, computer science, etc, and seeing how many take up the offer. That said, talent is so abundant in India, and labor is so cheap, a lot of work does get contracted out. Heck we contract with Smalltalk programmers in Toronto. It's the power of a free market -- rational allocation of capital and resources.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

The problem is partly cultural. Many people in the US hold religious beliefs which they take to be subject to empirical refutation. They see science as offering a refutation, so they're suspicious of science. There's a sort of "My kid only needs to know how to read the Bible and do 'rithmetic" undercurrent that distrusts "educated elites". People would rather send their kids to Bob Jones than Berkeley. There's a cultural war that would need to be won, but it doesn't have to do with sex.

[pointsal]

On top of the visa... how many of them are getting aid? How many of the schools are getting aid based on phantom enrollment?

[FreePaul]

State colleges are restricting admission of students from their own states by several methods to keep enrollments under control. Every foreign student enrolled takes the place of a local student who should be considered first. Private colleges restrict admission in various ways and in some cases favor foreign students. Fine for these private colleges except they always have their hands out for government money. Our government's money.