Posted on 11/17/2001 8:55:05 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
Investigators reported soon after the attacks of Sept. 11 that American Airlines Flight 77 hijacker Hani Hanjour probably entered the United States on a student visa, and that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) hadn't the slightest idea whether the visa remained valid. The uncertainty focused attention on the need to track the whereabouts of foreign visitors, including those holding international student visas.
A total of 547,867 foreign students are enrolled on such visas in accredited U.S. colleges and universities, according to the 2001 annual "Open Doors" survey of higher-education statistics prepared by the Institute of International Education (IIE). For each student-visa enrollment, the INS requires accredited institutions to provide the student's name, country of citizenship, residential address, full-time or part-time status, date of commencement, degree program, field of study, beginning and ending date of practical training, termination date and reasons for termination, and number of credits completed each year. Apparently many schools simply ignore the requirements.
Meanwhile the INS has failed to merge its cumbersome, paper-based tracking system into a computerized database in time to meet a 2001 implementation deadline set way back in 1996. And college administrators, who don't like spying on students for the government, have "found difficulties with deployment of the program," an INS spokesman concedes.
With political heat now falling from the heavens like fire, the INS says it will be introducing its computerized Student Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) in the summer of 2002, with expanded deployment expected by January 2003. Once fully deployed, the INS assures, the new system will require institutions to provide a current student address, visa classification and date issued, current academic or program status, and information on any disciplinary action taken against a student because of a criminal conviction.
Few expect it to happen that smoothly. When the IIE made its annual presentation at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 13, it cited a 92 percent response rate from school administrations to requests for general statistics. But the INS claims school administrators often simply ignore its requests for data on foreign students.
Todd Davis, IIE's director of research, explains the difference in the response to requests from IIE compared to those from INS. The information for the IIE survey, he points out, was aggregate data compiled for research to serve the needs of public policy; whereas the INS wanted individual-specific information for potential law-enforcement action.
Just as globalization has transformed U.S. trade, "internationalization" has transformed U.S. campuses. "The total number of students from abroad who enroll in a country's colleges and universities is the queen bee of statistics describing international student mobility," Davis noted in 1995.
In April 2000, President Clinton signed a "Memorandum on International Education Policy" directing the heads of Cabinet departments and agencies to work with educational institutions, state and local governments, private organizations and the business community to develop a coordinated national policy on international education. Institutions from universities to community colleges stepped up recruitment drives to lure more international students, anticipating both tuition income and federal funding for their efforts.
State Department officials are quick to note that the United States has played host to foreign students whose postacademic experiences have been significantly more positive than Hani Hanjour's. These alumni include, among thousands of distinguished leaders, such former international students as King Abdullah bin al-Hussein of Jordan (University of Michigan and Columbia University); four of Mexico's former presidents, as well as current president Vicente Fox (Harvard University); and even Afghanistan's former prime minister Abdul Zahir (Columbia University).
Keeping track of the whereabouts of foreign students once they were in the United States was not a high priority under the Clinton/Gore administration. But now that current events have Americans on edge about foreign-born terrorists, some in Congress want to know why it's been so difficult for the INS to produce a computerized database that would facilitate the process.
Part of the problem, says Davis of IIE, was that the largest repository of information — colleges and universities — was being uncooperative about student files. Another academic source insists to Insight that the institutions are collecting the required data , bu
Part of the problem, says Davis of IIE, was that the largest repository of information — colleges and universities — was being uncooperative about student files. Another academic source insists to Insight that the institutions are collecting the required data , but on paper — an irony considering that colleges these days are high-tech communities.
But the most likely explanation appears to be that academics view themselves as "counselors and confidants" to foreign students and resent being turned into "policemen" for the INS. The position many school administrators have taken is that cooperating with INS data collection would make them partners in "targeting" students. Doing so, they argued, would create barriers to international exchange at a time when they were striving to make their campuses more globally diverse.
Moreover, administrators expressed concerns — especially at the smaller and less well-financed schools — about the complexity and expense of software that might be necessary fully to cooperate with INS. And then there were all those complicated government forms. But IIE President Alan Goodman says that any parent of a coed knows that college administrators have no fear of complex questionnaires and applications for parents and college-bound students.
Another concern among academics was having to collect fees from students to support the INS database. Although never shy about assessing their own fees, or accepting federal funding, the schools wanted no part in collecting money for "the government." Also, it was not clear whether schools would be liable for INS fees of foreign students who did not pay or even show up for school.
These complaints are being dealt with, says Davis, a stakeholder in the Cooperative Interagency Program Regulating International Students (CIPRIS), which was the previous project name for the SEVIS system. Provisions in recent antiterrorism legislation have shifted from charging students fees to pay for the system to federal funding of the startup costs; at least initially.
Meanwhile, giving foreign nationals easy access to U.S. colleges and universities has made higher education one of the country's most-profitable service industries, say educators. The total number of foreign students studying at approved schools in the United States is evenly split between undergraduate and graduate studies, with 80 percent of undergraduate and 46.9 percent of graduate foreign students paying the higher out-of-state tuition rates from their own resources. States with the most international students, and therefore the most to lose if the United States slams the door on internationalization of education, include: California (74,281 students); New York (58,286); Texas (37,735); and Massachusetts (29,395).
In fact, educating international students has become an $11 billion to $13 billion industry in the United States. According to IIE statistics, California and New York earned $1.6 billion and $1.3 billion respectively from foreign students in 2000, followed by Massachusetts ($804 million) and Texas ($614 million).
Federal pressure on colleges and universities to intensify information collection on this lucrative customer base already is a source of tension throughout the academic community, which sees itself in competition with other English-speaking industrialized countries for foreign-student dollars. But as politicians, bureaucrats and academics hash out their differences about the costs and benefits of tracking the "internationalization" of U.S. higher education, nagging questions remain about how many of the roughly 51,423 foreigners the INS reported it granted academic and vocational student visas to in 1999 were not included in IIE's survey as enrolled on U.S. campuses for that period. These foreign students are "unaccounted for."
The INS has played catch-up with visa holders before. The status of foreign students in the United States was investigated after the 1972 attacks at the Munich Olympics. This was especially true of the status of foreign students enrolled in U.S. aviation schools, according to Michael Becraft, acting INS deputy commissioner, in testimony before a subcommittee of the House Education and the Workforce Committee on Oct. 31. After hostage-taking incidents at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979, Becraft adds, the INS registered (in person) all Iranian students in the United States.
Following the Sept. 11 attacks, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Jon L. Kyl (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation to bolster INS laxity in enforcement. One provision of the proposal — a six-month ban of all student visas — triggered an intense lobbying campaign from the academic community. Feinstein's press spokesman tells Insight the senator remains committed to improved visa enforcement but no longer feels a six-month ban on student visas is needed.
At press time, Attorney General John Ashcroft has just revealed that the service and law-enforcement functions of the INS will be separated as part of a restructuring plan that will be implemented over the course of the next two years. The objective: Clean up the mess.
Sheila R. Cherry is a writer for Insight.
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