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(Congressional panel asks if INS, academic institutions will meet January deadline)

By Charlene Porter  
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington, September 19, 2002 – The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reports that it will meet a January 2003 deadline to implement a new system for tracking and monitoring foreign students and exchange program visitors issued visas to the United States.  At the same time, members of a Congressional panel and representatives of academia are raising numerous questions about the readiness of the new system and its capability to become fully operational over the next several months. 

"We are determined to meet the deadline," said INS representative Janis Sposato in testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee September 18.  "We will all be winners when the system is deployed."

The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) is designed to "maintain critical, up-to-date information" about people entering the United States for study or professional exchanges, according to Sposato’s testimony, and will enable the INS to track students in the country "more accurately and more expeditiously."  SEVIS creates an Internet database that requires sharing, exchange and updating of information about visa holders by all the parties involved with them – the INS, academic institutions, technical training schools and the Department of State.

An estimated 550,000 foreign students and 275,000 exchange visitors come into the United States each year, according to evidence presented to the committee.

"SEVIS can reduce fraud in the (foreign student) program, improve data collection and analysis, and enhance the INS’s enforcement capabilities," according to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, who also testified before the committee.  While Fine agreed with the INS assessment that SEVIS will be technically operational by January, he raised questions about whether the INS will be able to adequately train all the workers who will be using the system, including those at the thousands of colleges, universities and technical schools who are involved in allowing foreign students on their campuses.

Fine also commended the INS for the progress that it has made in developing and implementing SEVIS in recent months.  In May, his office released a scathing review of the foreign student program, finding "numerous deficiencies, including an antiquated, inadequate data collection and monitoring system."

Intense scrutiny was focused on how the INS manages the foreign student program following the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Three of the suspected pilots of the four hijacked airliners were identified as aliens present in the United States on student visas.  The agency came under sharp criticism in March for laxity in its management and monitoring of visa holders after the agency issued letters acknowledging a change in visitor status to two of the dead hijackers.

INS practices were widely condemned years before, after New York’s World Trade Center suffered its first terrorist attack in 1993.  Six people were killed and 1,000 injured when a truck bomber detonated his vehicle in the basement of the massive tower complex.  That truck bomber was revealed to be a Jordanian national who’d entered the United States on a student visa in 1989.  

In reviewing this history as the September 18 hearing began, Pennsylvania Representative George Gekas said analysis shows that the INS "lacks accurate data about the identity of students who have obtained student visas, the current status of those students, and the extent to which there is fraud in the foreign student program."

SEVIS, authorized under the USA Patriot Act passed last May, is supposed to change all that.  The State Department will only issue a visa upon evidence that a student has been accepted for study at an institution certified as legitimate by the INS.  These institutions and other agencies are required to provide much more information about the students than in the past.  For instance, the student’s entry into the country will be recorded in SEVIS.  His enrollment in school and establishment of a U.S. address will be entered into SEVIS.  Any change in his course of study, employment and student status must also be entered into the system by the academic institution.

"We believe (SEVIS) is the single most important step the federal government can take to improve the monitoring of international students and exchange visitors," said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, representing 2,000 public and private colleges and universities.  Hartle credited INS for the progress it has made in implementing SEVIS so far, but expressed doubts about whether the agency has done everything necessary to allow the institutions to fully prepare for a January implementation.

Hartle said INS has not finalized the regulations for the program, nor answered all the technical questions put forth by institutions that have been working with a preliminary system for several months.  He said the INS has also failed to provide full details on what an institution needs to do to become fully certified to participate in SEVIS.

A Department of Justice (DOJ) review of INS procedures conducted earlier this year found that the issue of institutional certification and legitimacy is a critical one.  More than 7,500 institutions have been eligible to participate in the foreign student exchange program in the past.  A DOJ spot-check of 200 institutions in the INS database of active schools revealed that 86 institutions were no longer in operation, 40 had incorrect addresses and 16 had incorrect names, according to Inspector General Fine’s testimony. 

Sposato said INS is allowing preliminary certification of institutions that have received previous approval under the old foreign student visa approval program or that can show accreditation from educational authorities.  She said that flight schools and language schools are considered institutions requiring special scrutiny.  Some of the September 11 hijackers received flight training at U.S. schools, and that history casts a long shadow over INS actions in the current certification process.

In trying to resolve all these problems, Sposato said INS is working to juggle the competing interests of the new law – requiring speedy implementation – and the academic institutions that would like to move more slowly in adjusting to the system’s new requirements.  "It won’t make everyone perfectly happy," she said.

While abuse of the foreign visa student program by terrorists has caused unthinkable harm to the United States, the hearing witnesses and the committee members did not allow those events to adversely influence their belief that international educational exchange is of enormous value. 

Hartle cited the economic, cultural and international benefits of hosting foreign students and visitors in the United States.  "As the world grows ever smaller, meaningful exposure to international students will better prepare American students to live and compete in the global economy," said Hartle.

"Implementing SEVIS will allow our nation to strike the proper balance between openness to international students and exchange visitors and the security obtained by enforcing our nation’s laws," Sposato said.