Copyright 2002 Federal News Service, Inc.  
Federal News Service
September 24, 2002 Tuesday
LENGTH: 19284 words

HEADLINE: JOINT HEARING OF THE SELECT EDUCATION SUBCOMMITTEE AND THE 21ST CENTURY COMPETITIVENESS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE COMMITTEE
 
SUBJECT: HOMELAND SECURITY: TRACKING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION - PROGRESS AND ISSUES SINCE 9/11
 
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE PETER HOEKSTRA (R-MI)
 
LOCATION: 2175 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.DATE: SEPTEMBER 24, 2002

WITNESSES: GLENN A. FINE, INSPECTOR GENERAL, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE;
 
JANIS SPOSATO, ASSISTANT DEPUTY EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE, COMMISSIONER FOR IMMIGRATION SERVICES DIVISION, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE;
 
STEPHEN A. EDSON, ACTING MANAGING DIRECTOR, DIRECTORATE OF VISA SERVICES, BUREAU OF CONSULAR AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE;
 
DR. DAVID WARD, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION
 


BODY:
REP. PETER HOEKSTRA (R-MI): A quorum being present, the joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Select Education and the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness will come to order.

I'd like to thank my colleague from California, the chairman of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness, Mr. McKeon, for agreeing to hold this joint hearing on the policy implications of tracking international students in higher education. So that we can get to our witnesses, we have agreed to limit the opening statements to the chairman and the ranking minority members of each subcommittee. With that, I ask unanimous consent that the record remain open 14 days to allow members to insert extraneous material into the official hearing record. Without objection, that objection so ordered.

Thank you for being here today. We appreciate your willingness to share your insights and expertise into the activities of institutions and the various federal agencies that are involved in the monitoring of international students studying in the United States. More importantly, we look forward to the information you can share about how your monitoring activities have changed since 9/11 in the hearings these subcommittees held last October.

We are here today to learn about the implementation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System otherwise referred to as SEVIS, what issues are still outstanding in having it fully operational and what the interaction between all the players, that is, institutions of higher education, INS and the State Department have been.

One issue that has gotten some press recently is the concern of some about the January 30, 2003, deadline for the implementation of SEVIS. Some say that the deadline is impossible to meet, yet others such as the American Association of State Colleges and Universities representing more than 430 public four year colleges and universities and who submitted testimony for the hearing record, say that the deadline is reasonable.

We need to better understand what is driving the issues around this deadline. We are also interested in hearing the testimony of Mr. Fine, the Department of Justice inspector general. He will elaborate on the May 20, 2002 report outlining the problems associated with two of the 19 hijackers in particular, how the SEVIS system may or may not avoid those same problems in the future and what he sees as the outstanding issues associated with student visas.

It will be of great value to hear from all of our witnesses today as to what, if anything, each has done outside of the SEVIS system to ensure that students who enter this country for the purposes of studying here actually fulfill that obligation and can be accounted for. During our hearing last fall we learned that government agencies needed to improve their sharing of information and that this could be improved without congressional action. I believe we referred to this problem as a cultural issue and an issue of trust. I'm very interested to hear if any of those barriers, presumed or real, between law enforcement agencies and others have been removed and what effect, if any, the development of a Department of Homeland Security will have on this issue.

Clearly, security for the citizens of the United States must be our priority. However, having said that we also want to ensure that students from around the world continue to have access to the best post-secondary education system available. We also want to continue the sharing of cultures and ideas, which makes the world in which we live safer overall by removing many stereotypes and misperceptions.

There must be a way to accomplish both of these goals and to do so in an efficient and effective manner. Usually I turn there and I see Mr. Roemer who's serving on the Intelligence Committee there's also a hearing going on in the Intelligence Committee and that is where Mr. Roemer is. So that's the end of my opening statement.

I will yield to Mr. Tierney for his opening statement.

REP. JOHN F. TIERNEY (D-MA): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I am pleased to join the committee here today, which is not in my usual assignments but pitch-hitting. I want to appreciate the fact you're holding this hearing. I want to add my appreciation to all the witnesses who are going to testify in front of the subcommittee today.

I'm interested in hearing about the progress of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's efforts to administer the student and visitor exchange program. There was a hearing in last October, I understand that. I happen to be the only New England member of the Education and the Workforce Committee and the time that I've been back in the New England area, I've heard from a number of educators. In Massachusetts only there are 117 institutions of higher education and all of them seem to want the international student visa program to work. Obviously the educators in these schools as in schools around the country, I would imagine, have as their primary goal, a safe and secure learning environment within a free and secure nation.

They've expressed to me their strong view that welcoming international students to the campuses affords us an opportunity to interact with the rest of the world. These students, many of who are raised in vastly different cultures, including those with their type negative stereotypes about the United States, are able to experience an environment of positive interchanges while they contribute to the intellectual achievements and cultural riches of their universities and promote understanding across cultures and acquire an appreciation for the American values of freedom and democracy. At the same time, we all know that poor administration of the student visa program could be a threat.

Two of the September 11 hijackers manipulated the student visa program to remain in the country. We must do all that we can to prevent this from ever happening again. Some propose a total ban and end to new student visas but that is not a silver bullet. Punishing all foreign students in an effort to root out a few nefarious characters will not solve the problem. It will have a chilling effect on academic freedom.

Indeed, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Charles Vess, wrote to me to express this concern, saying, a blanket freeze is likely to be as unworkable as it is unsound and will be counterproductive to our strategic and economic needs. Even a limited ban on student visas will seriously damage our essential relationships with other nations. It will aggravate our national shortage of highly skilled scientists and engineers. We can reduce risk and promote vibrant international educational experiences in American schools. Indeed we must do so or risk a brain drain to other countries, including Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, that do not close their borders to students. That's why I prefer a balanced approach to allow foreign students who play by the rules to continue their education in America.

In December, I joined with my colleagues under the leadership of George Miller, and co-sponsor of House Resolution 3515, the International Student Responsibility Act, some of whose provisions are contained in SEVIS. We propose to require criminal background checks before students are allowed to enter the United States and close tracking while they're here. When SEVIS began we were told that the administration would dedicate significant resources so that educators had the technical assistance they needed to keep international student programs in place so that computers could interface and so that the government agencies such as the INS, Justice and the State, which had not effectively communicated before 9/11, could cooperate.

Unfortunately, as the new school year begins, many students are being left behind due to inefficient implementation of this program. As the Boston Globe reported in just yesterday's paper, hundreds of students enrolling or returning to Massachusetts colleges and universities have been delayed or prevented from entering the country because of new security policies, including extensive background checks on male applicants from Arab and Muslim countries.

One of those students was a third year Harvard law student who's now stranded in London without a visa. He noted that adding hurdles for students may be more harmful than helpful in the long run to our national interest. He was quoted as telling the Globe, "It's getting at the wrong people. It's targeting liberal Arabs who would go back home and change their countries." That result would not be acceptable to the vast majority of international students who have played by the rules and posed no threat to us nor to American schools that are enriched with international students, including the law student I just quoted and who share their experiences with other children and take home positive views of the United States, such as academic freedom and equality of opportunity.

I expect that our administration witnesses will convey Congress' concern that they make every effort to use the tools and the taxpayer dollars that have been given to them to implement this program effectively and I look forward to the testimony today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you.

I'd now like to recognize my colleague from California, the chairman of the Subcommittee on 21st century Competitiveness, Mr. McKeon, for purposes of an opening statement.

REP. HOWARD P. "BUCK" McKEON (D-CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I also want to welcome our witnesses here today and thank them for taking the time to appear before the subcommittees to inform us of what has occurred in the improvement of the monitoring of international students attending post secondary institutions of the United States.

Now, one of the concerns I have and I mentioned this when we last had this hearing. There was a lot of emphasis on students coming into the country on visas but that was actually a small portion. I don't remember the exact number but it was about 500,000 students coming in. But the other people that entered the country on visas was vastly higher than that and I want to make sure that -- our responsibility is students but there are much greater numbers coming into the country on visas and I hope equal attention is placed on those people coming in.

In the hearing held last October we learned a great deal about how an international student wanting to study in the United States goes about obtaining an I-20 from the school which is necessary to apply for a student visa. We learned about the different kinds of visas, F visas for those studying on the undergraduate level, J visas for exchange students, M visas for those seeking specific technical training and B visas being for students or for tourists. We also learned, due to the straightforward and upfront testimony of our witnesses, some of the shortcomings of what was then the monitoring system as well as some weak points in the sharing or lack of sharing of information between agencies involved in the monitoring of these students. We also heard from an institution and from students explaining what the process is like for them.

The previous testimony made clear to me the importance of continuing the exchange of ideas and cultures through international education and of bringing the best and the brightest from other countries together with students here in the United States. It was also made clear that international students are an important source of revenue for post-secondary institutions in the United States. We're looking constantly for ways to improve our economy and this is a very clean way to improve the environment. It's high tech but it does not do anything to harm the atmosphere.

We're here today to learn what has occurred since that last hearing and the tragic events of September 11 to preserve the safety and security of our students or our citizens while at the same time preserving the right of those seeking to enter the United States to avail themselves of the best education the world has to offer.

We're also here to learn about the implementation of the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System also known as SEVIS and what the system will actually do and what the responsibilities are of each of the various parties, that is the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the State Department and post-secondary institutions. It's encouraging to hear that all parties are committed to getting the SEVIS system up and running. I'm interested in hearing how the process has gone thus far and to learn what, if any, problems still exist in its full implementation. It will also be important to hear from the inspector general from the Department of Justice as to what still needs to be done even once the SEVIS system is up and running.

In the May 20th, 2002 report, the inspector general indicated that it will take more than just SEVIS to fully monitor and secure the student visa system. I'm looking forward to the insight and expertise that you can share with us. Finally what, if anything, do we do here in Congress? What do we need to do to ensure everyone's continued cooperation and commitment to the SEVIS system and in the ongoing quest for education, freedom and safety here in the United States. Thank you again for joining us here to discuss the important topic.

I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HOEKSTRA: I thank my colleague from California.

I'd like to recognize Mr. Holt from New Jersey.

REP. RUSH D. HOLT (R-NJ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to make a statement and I am pleased to be here at this hearing on this important subject of student visas and how we monitor foreign students. It's been a little over a year now and, as members of Congress at the behest of all our constituents, we've been looking carefully at our national security and ways to make the country more secure. Last October we held a hearing here on student visas and found many holes in the way the system had been running.

We all the know the story of Hani Hanjour who legally entered the U.S. on a student visa but didn't show up at the school he was going to attend. Mohammed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi entered on student visas and were both approved by the INS to change their student visas from visitor to student.

We all know the embarrassing situation when the change of status applications were approved nearly 10 months after submitting them to the INS and six months after completing training at the aviation school and, in fact, notification being received well after September 11th.

In the 1996 Immigration Bill that we passed into law, we required the INS to fully establish a foreign student tracking system by 2003. If the Student Exchange Visitor Information System or SEVIS had been installed, would we have been able to find these three and deport them before that tragic day in September? This is a question that haunts everyone who's been involved in this and I hope that today's witnesses will be able to help us examine this and understand it and understand related questions better.

Of the seven million foreigners who enter the U.S. in a year, a half million of them are here on student visas. Foreign students can bring a rich, cultural and intellectual experience to our educational system and we need to find a system that both allows students to enter the country while thoroughly ensuring that we're not allowing terrorists. It's a difficult task.

The PATRIOT Act accelerated the implementation of SEVIS to January 30th upcoming, 2003, and I'm interested to hear more about the SEVIS system and whether that date can be achieved with full implementation. And, of course, now and for months and years to come we should continually re-examine the balance here. We're obviously not setting out to harm schools.

We're not setting out to harm the half million legitimate students who come here to study, nor the millions of American students who benefit from the presence of these foreign students. Freedom of access is central to education and I think it is worth noting that, for example, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities has sent letters to some of us members pledging full support to the implementation of SEVIS by January 30th.

So we will for a long time be looking for the right balance but today, I think, we will be looking especially at the completeness of the implementation of the system as it has been presented and I'm eager to hear what the witnesses have to say. I'd like to extend my thanks to you, the witnesses, for being here today and I look forward to hearing from each of you. Thank you.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you, Mr. Holt.

Let me introduce the witnesses that we have today. We have Mr. Glenn Fine. Mr. Fine was confirmed by the United States Senate as inspector general of the Department of Justice on December 15, 2000. He had served as the acting inspector general since August of 2000. Mr. Fine joined the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General in January of 1995. He began as special counsel to the inspector general and in 1996 became the director of the OIG's Special Investigations and Review Unit. Welcome, Mr. Fine.

We also have Mr. Stephen Edson. Mr. Edson joined the foreign service in 1981 and is currently serving as the acting managing director of the Visa Services Directorate, Bureau of Consular Affairs at the State Department. Mr. Edson was consular general at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, from June of 1998 until January of 2001. Prior to that, Mr. Edson held overseas assignments in Japan, Thailand and India and started his career in Jakarta in 1982. Welcome to you.

We have Ms. Janis Sposato. Ms. Sposato joined the United States Department of Justice in 1975 and has held various positions throughout her tenure there. In her current position, Ms. Sposato is responsible for the adjudication of applications and petitions for immigration benefits. She also has held positions as general counsel and deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Management Division. Has also served in the Office of Legal Counsel as an attorney adviser. Welcome to you.

And then Dr. David Ward. Dr. Ward assumed his position as president of the American Council on Education -- ACE -- on September 1, 2001. Prior to taking on the presidency of ACE, Mr. Ward served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for eight years. He served as a faculty member for 25 years before that. Dr. Ward came to the United States on a student visa in 1960 and in 1976 he became a United States citizen. Congratulations.

I just yesterday had the opportunity to participate in a ceremony where we swore in 450 new citizens, some of whom had come here on student visas as well. So with that, Mr. Fine, we will begin with you and you know how the lights work -- green says you got plenty of time, yellow says you're running low and red says you're out. But it's a very important subject. We're very interested in hearing all of your testimony and I think that we're going to get a presentation on SEVIS as well. So that's going to take a little bit longer but we will begin with you, Mr. Fine.

MR. GLENN A. FINE: Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittees, thank you for inviting me to testify regarding the INS' tracking of foreign students studying in the United States. In May 2002 the Office of the Inspector General issued a lengthy reported entitled "The Immigration and Naturalization Services Contacts with Two September 11 Terrorists" -- a review of the INS's admission of Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, its processing of their change of status applications and its efforts to track foreign students in the United States.

In this report the OIG examines several related issues: first, the INS's contacts with and admissions into the country of Atta and Alshehhi; second, the INS's delayed notification to a flight school in March 2002, six months after the terrorists' attacks of September 11 that the two men's change of status applications had been approved; and third, the INS's monitoring and tracking of foreign students in general, including the INS's new system, SEVIS.

My testimony today will primarily address the third issue, the INS system for monitoring foreign students. I will discuss the problems in the existing system, the clear benefits of the Internet based system that the INS is implementing, called SEVIS, the significant progress that the INS has made in implementing SEVIS and the continuing concerns the OIG has about its full implementation.

The INS's previous system for recording information about the status of foreign students and schools approved to accept foreign students was antiquated, incomplete and riddled with inaccuracies. For example, of 200 schools we reviewed in the database, we found that 86 were no longer in operation. Of the 214 schools still in operation, 40 had incorrect addresses and 16 had incorrect names.

We believe that the new system, SEVIS, will address many of the INS's problems in tracking foreign students. For example, schools will enter information about students directly into SEVIS and the INS and schools will be able to identify more easily when a student's change of status has been approved, when a student enters the United States and whether the student is actually attending school.

Since we issued our report in May, the INS has made very significant strides towards implementing SEVIS which I describe in more detail in my written statement. Yet, despite these substantial efforts, we continue to believe that full implementation of SEVIS is unlikely by the deadline of January 30th, 2003. Our ongoing concerns have more to do with issues such as the process of certifying school eligibility and SEVIS training for INS employees and school officials rather than with SEVIS technical implementation.

First, the INS is requiring site visits of flight, vocational, language and other high risk schools prior to certifying them as eligible to accept foreign students. The INS intends to have contract investigators, using INS developed checklists, to perform these site visits. The INS has recently indicated that it will three contract investigation companies to perform the site visits and that by January 30th, the contract investigators would be able to visit all the high risk schools that apply for certification. We believe that this will be a difficult task and we are concerned about the comprehensiveness of the contractors' reviews particularly given the expedited timeframe.

We are also concerned about the INS's ability to adequately train and oversee the contractors who will be under significant time constraints to complete the visits. We believe the INS needs to develop an oversight process that will ensure the adequacy of these reviews. Further, the INS has not agreed with our recommendation to devote full time personnel in the INS districts to SEVIS. We are concerned that without dedicating full time personnel, INS staff will not be able to devote adequate attention to their SEVIS duties when other priorities arise.

In addition, the INS must train its employees who will be responsible for overseeing and using SEVIS. The INS held SEVIS training sessions and requested that each district office send a representative. But because the INS had not decided who in each district will be responsible for SEVIS, there is no assurance that the appropriate personnel attended the training session. SEVIS training must also be provided to INS adjudicators, inspectors and investigators.

Similarly, the INS needs to provide training on SEVIS to school representatives. Throughout the past year, the INS has held SEVIS demonstrations for school officials. However, these sessions were not necessarily attended by officials from smaller schools, including flight schools who are probably most in need of such training.

The subcommittees have also asked for suggestions about what Congress can do to improve the monitoring of international students studying in the United States. First, we believe that continued congressional interest and oversight can have an important impact on the program. The INS has made substantial strides towards implementing SEVIS but we believe SEVIS should remain an INS priority, particularly when other new and important issues confront the INS in the future. Continued congressional oversight can help ensure that full implementation of SEVIS remains a priority.

Second, the INS needs sufficient resources to fully and effectively implement the system, including to follow up on indications of fraud. Third, Congress should consider whether to require that part-time foreign students be tracked in SEVIS. Currently, only data pertaining to full-time students will be included in SEVIS.

In sum, I want to make clear that we believe that SEVIS will significantly enhance the INS's ability to track foreign students in the United States and will improve its ability to detect and prevent fraud. I also believe that the INS should be credited for making significant strides in implementing SEVIS. It appears that the INS will have a system operational and available by January 30th, 2003. It will have taken critical step towards fully implementing the system. But while we believe that SEVIS will be operational by January 30th, we question whether it will be fully implemented by that date.

For SEVIS to be fully implemented and for the program to succeed, we believe the INS must first ensure that all high risk schools are certified through site visits by January 30th. Second, dedicate sufficient resources to adequately training INS personnel and school officials. Third, ensure that SEVIS is available at all ports of entry, service centers, district offices and consular posts. Fourth, ensure that information from SEVIS is analyzed and used to identify non-compliant and fraudulent operations and fifth, follow up when the SEVIS data indicates fraud in the program. We recognize that these will not be easy tasks but we believe that they are necessary for SEVIS to achieve its full potential in improving the INS's foreign student program.

This concludes my statement. I will be pleased to answer any questions.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you very much.

Mr. Edson.

MR. STEPHEN EDSON: Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon to explain the department's role in the electronic verification of student and exchange visitor visas and to provide with an update on our implementation efforts.

We, in the State Department, are actively participating with INS and the exchange community in the design and the development of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. I defer to my INS colleague to outline SEVIS in detail but I believe it is the permanent system that will contribute to our national security as it adds integrity to the student and exchange visa issuing process. At the same time we are working on SEVIS implementation in response to a separate legislative mandate, the department has launched the Interim Student and Exchange Authentication System, ISEAS, which will provide for the electronic verification of student and exchange visas until SEVIS is fully implemented.

ISEAS is a web-based system that allows consular officers to verify the acceptance of foreign students and exchange visitors who apply to enter the United States as student whether F or M and exchange visitor J, non-immigrant visa categories. Based on information the schools and exchange program sponsors enter directly into the system, that portion of the legislative mandate that requires the department to inform INS of the F, M and J visa issuances is being accomplished using the existing the data share link between the INS and the Department of State.

As you know, section 501(c) of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 mandates that from September 11, 2002, which was 120 days from the act's passage, until SEVIS is fully implemented, a visa may not be issued to a student or exchange visitor unless the Department of State has received from an approved educational institution or exchange visitor program electronic evidence of the alien's acceptance into that institution and a consular officer has reviewed the applicant's visa record.

ISEAS is the means by which INS approved educational institutions and department designated exchange programs meet this legislative requirement. Consistent with the legislation, ISEAS is being established as an interim system with the limited support and capacity implied in that term. ISEAS will stand alone for its entire lifetime and will not be able to share any data with SEVIS. This is significant because as mandatory SEVIS compliance grows near and more and more educational institutions and designated program sponsors become SEVIS compliant, we'll find ourselves in a situation where designated officials will have to electronically register applicants in two separate databases, ISEAS and SEVIS. And consular officers, in many cases, will have to check two separate databases in order to confirm the provenance of these documents until ISEAS sunsets with final SEVIS implementation on January 30, 2003.

ISEAS consists of two independent computer based subsystems with data transferred between the two. The first subsystem contains an Internet web site and a direct link for approved institutions and exchange program sponsors to enter data from the appropriate acceptance documents for the students. To ensure data integrity, the ISEAS Internet subsystem validates the identification data entered against approved lists of institutions or program sponsors. Once ISEAS confirms that that institution or program sponsor is on one of the approved lists, the designated institution or program official enters the required data and the system returns a confirmation number.

Due to the very short development period mandated by the legislation, we were unable to deploy ISEAS before September 11. Consequently participating academic institutions and exchange programs were unable to enter the required data into the ISEAS database prior to deployment. Therefore, to minimize the negative impact on visa processing, we devised backup procedures to ensure the consular offices received timely status verification directly from the sponsoring institutions and programs during the first 30 days of ISEAS implementation until October 11th.

Should the ISEAS option in any case prove unworkable, students have been asked to contact their schools or sponsors and the consular officers in the field will accept direct email notification/confirmation from the institutions in the United States to the consular section. In the days since ISEAS launched we have communicated with hundreds of academic institutions and exchange program sponsors working through technical and notification issues and facilitating the electronic notification of students and exchange visitors both within the ISEAS system and through those backup procedures mentioned a moment ago.

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, as of this morning, and this is an update from the printed version of the testimony, over 2393 institutions have entered over 40,000 records in ISEAS. Since September 11, 197 visa issuing posts around the world have confirmed the records of 3,300 roughly student and exchange visas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committees for permitting me to share this information with you this afternoon. I'd be pleased to answer any questions that you may have.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you.

Ms. Sposato.

MS. JANIS SPOSATO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittees. I'm happy to be here this afternoon to tell you about SEVIS, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. As you've heard from the other witnesses, this is an exciting new program to track certain information about student and exchange visitors. It will enable the INS to monitor the compliance of foreign students and exchange visitors with the immigration laws with greater efficiency and with greater confidence that the information we have is accurate and up to date.

While I intend the use the largest part of my statement time to show you how the system actually works, I want to begin with a few remarks about readiness. Congress has mandated that the system be fully operational by January 1st, 2003. INS will meet that statutory deadline. By this I mean all of the software will be deployed and available to schools for use by that date. I also mean that INS will review the applications of schools and, as appropriate, give them passwords to use the system by January 30th, so long as the school has applied timely.

The significance of January 30th, is that INS intends to require that all schools use SEVIS for any new student documentation that they issue after that date. As of tomorrow when the INS will publish its certification rule in the federal register, any school may apply to use SEVIS by following simple procedures outlined in the rule and on the INS web site. I can say that we'll meet the January 1st deadline with confidence in part because the largest piece of the software is already deployed. That's the piece dealing with academic and technical schools. It's been available to selected schools since July 1st and it will be available to all schools as of tomorrow.

My confidence about our ability to review the applications and enroll all schools that apply timely is based upon our strategy for enrolling schools in a phased approach using three contract investigation firms with over 1500 employees to make the site visits. While it is our intention to make site visits to all schools, we intend to allow certain accredited schools with whom we've done business in the past to use SEVIS before their site visit is undertaking.

The Department of Justice inspector general has said several times that he has doubts about whether we will be able to have SEVIS fully implemented by January 1st. If you listen carefully and read beyond the headlines, what the I.G. is saying is that we will have this system deployed and used by schools by January but we won't have accomplished all of his recommended training of everyone involved with the system and our plans for compliance monitoring won't be fully accomplished.

I agree with the inspector general that compliance monitoring and training are ongoing needs. SEVIS is a program. It's not an event. It will grow and develop after January 1. We've already conducted two training conference with the INS officers who will be using SEVIS most directly. We have additional training and compliance programs planned for the spring of 2003 and there will be more after that. But make no mistake about it, the system will be fully functional by January 1st and schools will be required to use it for all new students as of January 30th.

The schools have a different set of concerns about January deadlines. They are concerned about their own ability to comply with the deadlines, as outlined in the proposed rule published by the INS last May. Like the inspector general, they realize that INS will have made the system fully available before January. We are working with the schools to help make their transition to SEVIS as easy as possible. Over the last year we've attended over 100 meetings with school groups to acquaint them with their responsibilities under SEVIS and we have many more scheduled over the next year.

We have developed SEVIS training videos for distribution to the schools and published our proposed program rule in May of this year for comments. We have a robust help desk to answer questions and assist schools as they begin to use SEVIS. And finally we are developing a batch processing capability to allow schools to load data directly into SEVIS from their school computer system minimizing the necessity for manual data entry. This week we made available a system to test on our web site a school's ability to use the batch processing capability in SEVIS. All of this is well in advance of the January deadline.

Much has been accomplished and much remains to be done. The system is simple and the largest part is here today. I think the best way to show you is with a short demonstration. I will be assisted in this by Stella Durina (ph), our director of student operations. Before I actually show you the screens from the system, I'd like to walk you through the process with a single student. SEVIS is the great big data base in the middle of the screen. It receives and transmits data to and from various sources. At number one, the student begins by applying to a school or multiple schools. If accepted, the school will enter certain data about this student into SEVIS via the Internet. That's number one you can see.

The system will print a form I-20, which the school will send to the student with his or her acceptance packet, and that's shown with number two. Next the student takes the I-20, or I-20s, if they've been in accepted in multiple schools and applies at a consulate for a visa. That's shown in number three. At the consulate the Department of State will be able to access the data from SEVIS about this prospective student and determine whether to issue a visa. If a visa is issued, the data is recorded and transmitted to SEVIS and the system will invalidate any other outstanding I-20s for that student. So that's shown at number four.

At a port of entry, the entry of the student is recorded and transmitted to SEVIS. That's number five. And SEVIS then notifies the school that the student has arrived. That's number seven. Within 30 days of the close of the school's registration period the school must record the registration of the student, shown at numbers six and seven. If this doesn't happen the system will notify the school and the INS district office of the discrepancy. If it is a school error, it can be corrected at that time. If it is not an error, the INS district office will refer the matter to INS enforcement for further handling. And that's number eight on the screen.

Over a student's career at the school, certain other events must be recorded by the school such as change of address, early completion or any known failure to maintain student status. Eventually the student's record in SEVIS is closed when the course of studies is completed. And that's number seven. Now, I'd like to show you the I- 20 form that a school fills out with a new student. I'm going to go through it very quickly because you don't really need to learn the details. All you really need to see is that it is here and it is simple for the school to complete. It contains very little information that is different from the paper I-20 that the schools type today.

Okay. What you have here is an I-20 that's filled out for me, Janis Sposato and it has my country of birth, information about my residence in Italy, my country of origin. When you go to the second page of the I-20 -- and there are a lot of blanks on this I-20 because they are not all required fields for the school to fill out when a student first arrives. For example, the address, the foreign address on page 2 is filled in but the U.S. address would not be filled in at that time because the student wouldn't have one. At the later point in time, when the student registers, the U.S. address becomes a mandatory field.

So, at the time of application, you're filling out the preliminary information, the foreign address and a little bit of information about the course of study that the student is going to take. When you go to the -- and that's the second page. The third page of the form includes information about the student's ability to pay the tuition. The light blue part of the form is information about what it costs to go to that particular institution and the dark blue is information submitted by the student about their sources of funding.

When this last screen is filled out, if there are no dependents -- if the student will have dependents who are traveling with the student to the United States, there will be another screen about dependents -- if there are no dependents, the form is transmitted and it moves into SEVIS and an I-20 form is produced by the system with the barcode. And that I-20 form is what's taken to the embassy and we didn't get the I-20 form. It's coming. There it is. That's the system in a nutshell. It's here. It's available and it's being used by about 1,000 schools right now and many more to come.

Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you.

Dr. Ward.

MR. DAVID WARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee --

REP. HOEKSTRA: Could you hold the mike up, please? Thanks.

MR. WARD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I am glad to be here representing the ACE, membership organization of college presidents of 1800 institutions and 76 other educational and exchange visitor organizations. Much has changed in the months since this committee last met to consider issues relating to international education and student visas.

But one thing that has not changed is the importance of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, SEVIS. This electronic tracking system will link U.S. embassies and consulates overseas, every INS port of entry and every institution of higher education and exchange visitor program who remains the single most important step that the federal government can take to improve the ability to monitor international students. We continue to strongly support SEVIS and we would like to see it implemented as soon as possible.

We think that INS has done a good job of implementing SEVIS. They have made progress more rapidly than we ever thought possible a year ago. They've consulted us. They've attended professional meetings to talk to our constituencies. They will have to perform the operations on campus. All colleges and exchange visitor programs know that SEVIS is coming and understand the seriousness of implementing it promptly and properly.

We have communicated developments to them. Colleges and exchange programs know, as the ultimate users of the system, that they have a central role to play in making SEVIS work. Many schools are now hiring staff, working overtime and upgrading their IT systems so that they will be ready on January 31st. They are of course expensive changes but all colleges are spending money without hesitation. But while the INS has done a good job and we are ready and willing, indeed anxious to do our part, we are somewhat concerned about how much remains to be done in a rapidly shrinking period of time before our members must be fully compliant.

Unfortunately, we do not know all that we need to know if we are likely to be able to make this work smoothly when the compliance date arrives. Let me be specific. The regulations covering SEVIS and international student visas -- that's F and M -- have not been published in final form. They must still be reviewed and cleared by both the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget. We do not expect them before Thanksgiving.

The regulations governing SEVIS and exchange visitor visa J, that must be issued by the State Department not INS, have not been published in draft form. The draft regulations have been under review at the Office of Management and Budget for more than 100 days. Given this delay, we are unlikely to have the J regulations until after we are expected to be in full compliance.

INS has not yet determined how many campus officials, called Designated School Officials or DSOs, will be permitted to process or enter data into SEVIS. Because of the added workload created by SEVIS, campuses, especially those with large numbers of international students will need more DSOs. Batch processing, a key element of SEVIS for schools or exchange programs with more than 200 students or visitors, may not be ready for full operational testing until mid- October. The batch processing test announced by INS last week will allow schools and exchange programs to test the system but only in a very preliminary manner.

Schools have hundreds of technical operational questions and have had a very uneven success in getting answers from the INS helpdesk. According to the Department of Justice inspector general, INS has not provided adequate training to its own regional office staff that will advise campuses about SEVIS implementation. The amount of the fee that students must pay to register in the system and the procedure for collecting the fee remain unsettled. INS has as yet no plans, although it probably will, to train campus officials.

Adding to the complexity, the State Department, as required by the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, put a temporary system in place two weeks ago to electronically monitor international students and exchange visitors on a preliminary basis. Known as ISEAS, this is in essence a pre-SEVIS electronic tracking system with different requirements than we will face under SEVIS. There is absolutely no linkage between ISEAS and SEVIS.

I do, however, want to reiterate that colleges and universities and exchange visitor programs have a strong commitment to implementing SEVIS as soon as possible and to meeting the deadline at the end of January. But to do this, we ask that we have all the tools and the regulatory guidance to do this in a timely and effective manner. We right now find ourselves in a position of a homeowner who wants to install a new furnace but lacks an instructional manual, needs tools that are not yet available and doesn't have some of the parts that the manufacturer promised to provide. This is a challenge for us and we respect the challenge of INS in trying to implement SEVIS by the end of January.

Mr. Chairman, I wish to assure you and the members of your committee or your subcommittees that we wish that SEVIS will be implemented by the end of January and we will commit ourselves to make Herculean efforts to accomplish this task. Right now, we just simply have some worries about what will happen when the compliance day arrives and some of the problems that I have indicated will still be present.

Thank you very much.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you very much to the panel. We will now go to a process of five minutes of questioning for the members.

Is it an accurate description to say that on January 30, we will be compliant with the mandate of Congress but it may not quite work the way that we want it to? I mean, technically, we will have met the target but it may not be working quite the way that we would have wanted it to be.

MS. SPOSATO: Well, the congressional date is January 1st. The system will be up and running and schools will be enrolled and able to use it on January 1st. And I can never say a system won't have glitches but the system's been up now since July. So we're pretty confident about the way the system will work. The full amount of training -- and we have trained the INS officers. We brought them in twice already and the training may not be as full and complete as we would like it to be and our compliance efforts won't have really been put into place. So that's why I say it's not an event that occurs on January 1 but the system will be there and it will be working and we think working well. But there's always more to do.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Yeah. I mean, if Dr. Ward is accurate that the rulemaking is not done, that -- you know, how does that impact Dr. Ward and the schools that he represents if there is not any rulemaking.

MS. SPOSATO: Well, there is rulemaking. INS put its regs involving the F&M programs, which are the academic and technical schools -- we published our regs for comments by the school and other communities in May. And that proposed rule is the roadmap for what the schools have to do. And to the extent that there are school concerns about the number of DSOs, et cetera, it's because they've commented and seen that rule.

INS will have its final rule published before the January date. You know, the review and comment process for federal rules is not something I can control or want to make predictions about, but it will be out -- our rule will be out this fall. The State Department is working very hard to get their J rule promulgated, whether it's promulgated an as interim final rule or as a proposed rule I don't know, but we are going to do everything we can to have the rules out as soon as possible.

But the schools do know the basic content of those rules because our rule has been out since May.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Now, why are part-time students not included? Can a foreign student come here and get a visa on a -- come here as a part-time student?

MS. SPOSATO: No. Is that a question for me?

REP. HOEKSTRA: Just whoever can answer the question.

MS. SPOSATO: The way -- you know, when people come to the United States they come with some kind of status. You can come because you're going to be a full-time student, in which case you can get an F visa or an M visa. You can come to be a visitor, in which case you get a B visa. So you can come based upon different theories and that is the basis upon which the State Department gives you a visa. Right now, you cannot obtain a visa to be a student if you are not going to be a full-time student.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Now, who brought that issue up?

MR. FINE: I did, Mr. Chairman. The concern that we have is that yes, you can come to the United States on a B visa as a visitor for pleasure or for business, and if you take part-time studies under a certain number of hours per week you're not required to get a student visa and you're not required to change your status in any way. That's what happened, for example, and that's what happens with people attending flight schools or other trucking schools, students that would be of concern but who come here with a B visa and then take those courses and are not monitored or tracked in any way by this system.

REP. HOEKSTRA: So the concern there is that they could come to school here and get training which we might not want them to have. Is that the concern? Because I'm assuming under these other systems we're also going to have a tracking mechanism, but the loophole there is say we don't want to train any more pilots.

MR. FINE: Well, we have no indication or no tracking of who has been trained or who's been attending those schools or not.

MS. SPOSATO: Well, if I may, the INS has put in place a very aggressive -- actually it was the Department of Justice -- tracking system for people who might attend flight schools, which is separate and apart from full-time students in track schools who would also be tracked in SEVIS. To get at the chair's concept that there are certain kinds of training that you might not get on a full-time basis, you might get when you're here on some other kind of visa, that we might want to keep control of.

On the other hand, if you're here with your spouse who's an H-1B worker and you want to take courses in gardening or something like that, INS has no particular interest, I don't think the U.S. government has any particular interest in tracking that kind of part- time student. So we are -- we do have a pretty aggressive program in place for tracking flight students separate and apart from SEVIS.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Is that the kind of stuff that's spelled out in rulemaking?

MS. SPOSATO: Yes, there is a rule about that. I'm not overly familiar with the program but it involves anybody who wants to study on any kind of basis for any amount of time to fly aircraft over a certain weight limitation.

MR. FINE: I think that's correct. You have to fly an aircraft I think it's over 12,000 -- I forget the exact number but it's a larger aircraft, it's not smaller aircraft, and that's obviously a concern for smaller aircraft as well as some other schools which are not -- types of schools which are not covered by that program.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Does the rulemaking take into account and lay out the dynamics of the system in terms of spelling out if a student falls out of status, what determines out of status and how quickly the school has to respond and SEVIS? How does that --

MS. SPOSATO: The rulemaking I believe is fairly specific about requirements for a school to report certain events. For example, a failure to show or a dropping of credits so they fall into a part-time status, and in most cases it's within 30 days the school has to make that entry.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Penalties attached to the schools not providing the information?

MS. SPOSATO: I don't believe there are penalties assessed on the school but if the school doesn't meet its obligations under SEVIS, one, we will know it, two, we have a biannual certification process that is required by the statute and the school can be denied access to SEVIS, which would be a penalty of sorts.

REP. HOEKSTRA: How would you know if somebody fell out of status and the school didn't tell you?

MS. SPOSATO: That particular thing we might not know immediately but when we do our biannual certifications it's the kind of thing that we'll be looking for. We'll be looking at school records to make sure that they comport with what's been reported in SEVIS.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Do you have the -- will you have the resources to do -- because how many schools do you have to check? This includes the --

MS. SPOSATO: Well, you know, no one knows the number of schools and that's -- we're expecting --

REP. HOEKSTRA: What do you mean we don't know the number of schools?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, we don't know the number.

REP. HOEKSTRA: We hope you --

MS. SPOSATO: We don't know the number of schools who will apply to be in SEVIS. We know the number of schools who are active in our system today and that's under 10,000, so we have some sense of who will apply and who will use SEVIS. We do -- and as of tomorrow, we will have in place our regulation that will explain our plans for certifying schools and they include charging a school a fee which will be used to pay for the certification process, and it would be our anticipation that the two-year process would work somewhat like the initial process, although we may modify it somewhat to reflect the different situation.

REP. HOEKSTRA: A fee per student, fee per application?

MS. SPOSATO: This is a fee per application per school. The school would pay the fee for each campus that is applying to be in the system.

REP. HOEKSTRA: So it's not per student? I mean, the University of Wisconsin with 1,000 applicants will pay the same -- will pay more or less than the technical school that has 10 students?

MS. SPOSATO: It will -- assuming it has one campus that is admitting the foreign students, they will pay the same fee as a smaller school. And the concept behind the fee is that we are going to send a contractor to make a site visit to the school to work with the school official to make sure that they're adequately aware of their responsibilities under SEVIS, to make sure they have the record keeping ability that they need and that they have actually met their requirements under the old system. And that will cost us the same to do that with a contractor, whether it's a school with a lot of students or a school with just a few.

REP. HOEKSTRA: And how big is the fee?

MS. SPOSATO: The fee is $580 per campus.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Five hundred and eighty dollars per campus every two years?

MS. SPOSATO: No, that's the initial fee. We haven't yet done a fee study and really worked out the details of what we will do at the two year mark, so the two year fee could be less if we determine that fewer site visits are necessary or a different kind of monitoring is advisable. So it will be a $580 fee for a single campus first time in.

REP. HOEKSTRA: I would guess with travel, lodging, you may get about two or three hours of contractor work per location to certify.

MS. SPOSATO: No, we're expecting a little more than that. We've hired contractors who have nationwide networks of investigators.

REP. HOEKSTRA: So, okay, you're going to get six hours per campus.

MS. SPOSATO: That may be.

REP. HOEKSTRA: I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You're going to get a deal and you're going to get them for $80 an hour and they're not going to charge you mileage and they're not going to charge you for lunch or a report. So you may get somebody for six or seven hours on campus?

MS. SPOSATO: We are expecting a one day visit. That's correct.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Okay.

MS. SPOSATO: Part of that fee though, but not all of that fee goes to the contractor. Part of that fee is used by the INS for its officers to --

REP. HOEKSTRA: That makes me even more nervous. I can't believe that you can certify these folks in less than a day.

MS. SPOSATO: Well, it's a very aggressive program. We're doing what we can in the time we have.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Does it mean it all is dependent -- SEVIS is only as good as the information going in and if these, you know, screening these schools for less than one day and their track record per campus, you know, that's going to tough. I've got to believe that Coach Osborne took more time than that screening one football player at the University of Nebraska. So -- and you can see what's happening at the University of Nebraska now when they've cut down their screening time.

(Laughter.)

MS. SPOSATO: Well, if I could reply. You know, I would like nothing better than to be able to spend a week with each school. We don't have that luxury before January but the initial site visit and review of the school's application is not the only compliance measure that is build into this program.

We will have an analytic group once the school begins entering data into SEVIS. We will have an analytic group that watches that information and we will be able to see things like, for example, a school doesn't enter the registration of students on a timely basis and the system therefore kicks out alerts. But when we go behind those alerts the school says, oh, actually they did attend, they're right here.

So, when we find those kind -- we will be monitoring that kind of thing as the system develops. And that's why I agree with the inspector general that there's a lot more to running the program than simply delivering the system on the first day. There's -- we have a lot of --

REP. HOEKSTRA: And that's exactly, I think, the point. There's a lot more than running the system. I mean, we know what the flaws in the system were where, I think, out of a sample of 200 schools, that there were -- what were the numbers you used?

MR. FINE: There were -- 86 were no longer in existence or defunct and about 40 of them -- of the 114 that were still operational, 40 of them had incorrect information in the system. So, 43 percent of the schools on the list that the INS had were no longer working -- operational.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Ms. McCollum.

REP. McCOLLUM: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

When was the first SEVIS I implemented? What year was that?

MS. SPOSATO: If you mean the CIPRIS system --

REP. McCOLLUM: Yeah, excuse me, CIPRIS.

MS. SPOSATO: In 1997.

REP. McCOLLUM: And since 1997 where we had a system in place and it's now today and we're still finding we have wrong addresses and a system that doesn't work, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I'm glad you're having this hearing. I had a bill and I wanted to look at changing the system so radically and putting in the INS because we had a system that didn't work at our colleges and universities and the system that I hear before me today, gives me great concern when you and I will have confidence that we have a system that does -- is even working today.

Mr. Chair, after the events of September 11th and it became clear that student visas might have been involved again, the state and universities systems, it was incumbent upon them to collect fees to pay for this program and we're seeing what you get for the dollar.

I introduced a bill on October 4 to look at having us take care of the fees so at least we had a steady stream of income to get some of these operations going. In my district in St. Paul, we have 10 universities, community colleges and private colleges. It's the home to MacAllister College where the person who presides over the U.N., Mr. Kofi Annan, had his education.

We take great pride in the fact that we have many students and I'm very proud also of our flight school in Minnesota which reported their suspicions on one of their students that were attending. But I do have some questions. How much is it actually going to cost once you work out some of these problems to administer this program annually? How much is it going to cost the INS? How much is it going to cost the State Department and what fee is going to passed onto foreign students or what fees are going to be absorbed by the university system?

MS. SPOSATO: Congress appropriated $37 million for the development and deployment and initial operation of SEVIS and we are using that money today. Once the $37 million is exhausted or somewhat before that, a student fee will need to be assessed to continue the operation of the system and the program.

A fee study has recently been conducted. To look at that fee, Congress has mandated that INS collect such a fee and that it not exceed $100.

REP. McCOLLUM: Madam, I asked you how much it was going to cost, not your timeframe.

MS. SPOSATO: And I'm not prepared to tell you the data but I'd be happy to get back to you with estimated numbers.

REP. McCOLLUM: I would appreciate you giving that to the chair -- we're asked to do our job, we need the information. We need to know what we need to appropriate in order to make our homeland secure.

Another question that I have is, when you -- the discussion about part time training. I am drawing from inference that there are -- as you have low risk and high risk schools, as you have part time students, you will be looking at those that are attending a high risk and low risk school. For example, if I'm a part-time student due to my health or I'm a spouse or a dependant or someone who came in on a H1, these then want to take Minnesota history or the history of the United States or something like that.

And I'm at St. Thomas College for example, I'm in a low risk institution part-time but if all of a sudden I want to learn how to fly a heavy aircraft, that puts me at a high risk institution. Because, Mr. Chair, I'm very concerned with the amount of resources and the number of students and the amount of misinformation that's still out there on the system that they're collecting that we are not only going to not meet this guideline but I don't see us having a lot of confidence in any deadline shortly.

In closing, Mr. Chair, I would just like to point out for the record also, in the information that I have in front of me, there are over 500,000 foreign students, 500,000 foreign students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States. My son has been a foreign exchange student in a reciprocal program.

I have great affection for our foreign exchange programs. I think they help nation building. I think it helps spread democracies. But with those numbers in mind, Mr. Chair, we have 232,000,000 visas issued in the United States. So this is like searching for a needle in a haystack if someone wants to come in.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you.

I'm assuming that based on the answer to the question from Ms. McCollum, you have an idea based on the study that's done whether $100 is a sufficient enough fee or not but you're just not prepared to tell us at this point. Is that correct?

MS. SPOSATO: I can say that the study came in under $100, significantly. I just don't have the total budget, which is what I understood the question to be.

REP. HOEKSTRA: All right. Thank you.

Mr. McKeon.

REP. McKEON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have some of the same concerns that Ms. McCollum ended her statement on. We have -- the record I have shows that we have 300,000,000 entries and exits to the United States annually and we're focusing on the 500,000 students and it seems like we have lots of questions with the system to monitor those students. I'm also concerned about the other 299,500,000 that we're not even talking about right here today. How many high risk schools are there?

MS. SPOSATO: The INS has not named categories of high, medium and low risk schools.

REP. McKEON: What would be the definition of --

MS. SPOSATO: Well, I'm not sure.

REP. McKEON: Who's going to determine that?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, the regulation requires -- that will be published tomorrow will allow the INS to prioritize the visit -- the site visits to schools based on a risk analysis which we will have to conduct.

REP. McKEON: Will we be given a copy of that?

MS. SPOSATO: I'd be glad to share it when it's done.

REP. McKEON: Okay. I have a question for both the INS and the State Department. It's been widely reported that federal investigators have charged a professor at Morris Brown College in Atlanta with helping 17 foreign students fraudulently obtain student visas to enter the United State. Specifically from 1997 to 2001, according to news reports, at least 17 foreign nationals paid between $2,000 and $5,000 each for documents that helped them to be accepted at Morris Brown. They used the documents to get student visas so they did not plan to attend the school. How we'll see this perform in terms of stopping such a problem?

MR. FINE: From my understanding of the case that you described the documents were --

REP. McKEON: Fraudulently obtained.

MR. FINE: Fraudulently obtained but legitimate documents and if the students' been, during the course of this interview overseas, carried off this misrepresentation, they would likely obtain visas on the assumption again that the documents were verified in SEVIS. So there isn't anything other than our instincts in interviewing them that would catch them overseas under these circumstances where they are complicity from inside the university of I think that would be the tail end when they didn't show up at school in the United States where we'd catch them.

MS. SPOSATO: The system will help in one way for the State Department and that -- if you remember we showed you a I-20 form with a barcode on it. If it were actually a full I-20 firm, if it were a falsified document, when the State Department went into the system to see about that particular student, they wouldn't find that student in the system. So it's more secure than a system that is based on carrying pieces of paper because pieces of paper can be fraudulently obtained. But no system is completely fraud proof. If the perpetrator of the fraud is the designated school official, it will be very difficult to detect that fraud until we get to -- unless we have some reason to suspect from out analytic work or until we get to our two year review of that school and, if those two year reviews are thorough enough, we should be able to verify from school records that the person has not actually attended.

REP. McKEON: But if you, as my understanding is, if they come into the country then don't come to the school, would SEVIS pick that up them?

MS. SPOSATO: If the school did not enter the registration of the student, then SEVIS would pick it up and we could take it from there but if the school official is the perpetrator of the fraud, they might well enter into the system that the person arrived.

REP. McKEON: So your people that go out -- the contractors that go out and visit the schools, is there any way when they do that, or is there any way in the system that there could be a double check that one person couldn't have the control of both filling out the I-20 and then indicating that the student had actually enrolled?

MS. SPOSATO: Requiring two different entry people for that. It's not required by our current rule. It's certainly something we can look at.

REP. McKEON: It seems to me that you've testified that January 1st you'll be up and running. You'll have a system. I would hope that somebody will really look at things like this that could be done. I mean, one person out of all of the schools that has been identified doing this, that's very minor. But that could be the exact person that we don't want in the country. So it seems like we have, I guess I don't want to use the word 'accounting', for finding problems but there should be systems set up that would take care of that kind of a situation.

MS. SPOSATO: I can tell you that we'll definitely look at that. You're looking at burden on the school. You're requiring two people where one would have done but there's definitely some merit to it.

REP. McKEON: I don't want to put burden on the school but why spend $37 million and all this effort to set up something that could easily -- one person could bypass it and make it of no avail? Once you get the system up and running, how many schools -- you said you started in July -- how many schools do you currently have using the system?

MS. SPOSATO: One thousand have been approved to use the system.

REP. McKEON: One thousand have paid the $580?

MS. SPOSATO: No. Actually because our rule wasn't published we entered, I mentioned in my testimony, a phased approach of school entry and basically we allowed accredited schools who we have a track record with to apply based on paper not a site visit to apply and be admitted to use SEVIS prior to having their site visit. And that's what these 1000 or so schools are who are using the system today. As of tomorrow all other schools will be able to apply and pay their money, have their site visits presumably before January and be admitted to use the system and then immediately after that we will follow and get those 1000 to pay their money and have their site visits and we'll be finished the round of initial entry.

REP. McKEON: Site visit before January 1st? You're talking October, November, December -- three months to visit 1000 schools?

MS. SPOSATO: No. Many more than that but we have three contractors and 1500 people waiting to do it.

REP. McKEON: Fifteen-hundred people?

MS. SPOSATO: That's right. Working for the contractors in a nationwide network.

REP. McKEON: That's all they're going to be doing. So that we have over 9500 schools but they won't all be using the system because only the ones that would be using the system would be bringing in international students?

MS. SPOSATO: I'm not sure I understand the question.

REP. McKEON: All the schools that we have -- all of our community colleges, universities, preparatory schools across the country -- do not have to sign up for SEVIS, only the ones that will be bringing in international students?

MS. SPOSATO: That's correct.

REP. McKEON: So it would be some less than 9500?

MS. SPOSATO: We're expecting something in that range to apply.

REP. McKEON: My records show that that's how many schools we have -- 9576.

MS. SPOSATO: Well, our information is that there are 7500 schools actively using our current system. Our pre-SEVIS.

REP. McKEON: So that would be about the number then probably.

MS. SPOSATO: Probably something like that.

REP. McKEON: I could probably go on for another day, Mr. Chairman, but I see my time's up, but I thank you. I yield back my time.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Yes. I think I see where the gentleman's going. I mean, if you've got 1000 that are up now it means that you're going to have to do somewhere between 5000 and 6500 between now and January 1.

MS. SPOSATO: The 1000 that are up now are up on the basis of a small group of headquarters personnel reviewing their documents. The next 7000 let's say are going to be investigated by these three contractors with a nationwide network and we have over 80 school officers around the country who've been trained twice on how to do this and then we are ready, willing and able to support those school officers in this effort between now and January. If we find that more people are applying in Chicago than we expected, we'll deploy resources to Chicago to deal with the surge.

And that's the basic plan for the schools. And if we are not able to make a site visit to each and every school prior to the January date, we have left room for ourselves in this regulation to make the site visits to the higher risk schools once we develop some criteria for that and postpone the site visits for the others until after January. So we feel pretty confident. It's a big job and it's an aggressive schedule but we feel pretty confident that we can do this by January and continue it after January.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Well, I'm excited about your optimism in getting this right. It looks like a big job to me in doing that many schools and, of course, the questions in January and February will be whether all the schools had their site visits and then it will get to be an issue of the quality. The quality of the site visits and the accuracy of the information and the process by which the schools are going through the approval process of the students and those types of things.

Mr. Tierney.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that goes a little bit towards what my question was going to be. What's your contingency plans if your optimism doesn't bear out? And that is, as I think I heard you correctly, is to prioritize, move on down the line.

MS. SPOSATO: That's correct.

REP. TIERNEY: Last October, the deputy INS commissioner told us that it wasn't known as to how many foreign students remain in the country illegally after they complete their education or their studies. Is that still the case?

MS. SPOSATO: Yes. I believe that's still the case.

REP. TIERNEY: Do we have any plan to identify and take action with respect to that probably significant number of people?

MS. SPOSATO: Into the future, that's what Congress has mandated that INS develop an entry/exit system that tracts all entries and all exits and when that system is fully deployed and in place, it should be a relatively easy process to do that. Until that happens, we do have some enforcement plans. We do have some exit data about people who leave and some contacts and one of our analytic plans is to take the exit data we have and run it against our SEVIS data of students who have completed their program and watch the trends and what we see there. But, because we don't have complete exit data, it's not going to be a perfect situation.

REP. TIERNEY: In the House resolution that I mentioned in my opening remarks, one of the provisions that we put in 3515 was that if a student finished or completed the studies that they would not get their transcript until either they had left the country and gone back home or had arranged to continue on through legal means. Would that be helpful to you?

MS. SPOSATO: It might help quite a bit. We could certainly look at that.

REP. TIERNEY: It seems to me that it may at least have some impact on a fairly good number of folks.

Dr. Ward, there's been a lot of people in the Washington Post, I think, mentioned in one of their recent articles about men from high risk countries having trouble getting student visas. Are you aware of that issue and can you tell us what are the schools doing about the delay in those students' applications and visa processing?

MR. WARD: Well, I don't there's anything they can do. I think we recognize that there is a security challenge since 11th and I think everybody has to have a lot of patience. And I think since you cannot -- our intelligence resources can't pinpoint who our problems are, there is a certain necessity I think that people who are perfectly innocent get caught in a lot of jam because of the greater care and prudence in issuing visas. But they are of course specific to certain groups.

And I think it is tragic -- somebody who's obviously about to complete a degree and went home for a vacation cannot now get back in and there are individual hardships. But I think all of us are trying to weigh that individual difficulty against the fact that there is a security challenge. And the State Department is in a position of having to vouch for the security of people entering this country.

I don't think they are being prohibited from entering. It's just a long delay in getting back in. This is one of those very difficult trade-offs between security and fairness.

REP. TIERNEY: Yes.

MR. FINE: If I could just add to those comments, we in the intelligence and law enforcement communities, we've been working very hard both to identify the criteria used for special scrutiny of particular types of cases and to develop the processes that will ensure that the cost, in terms of time, of those -- that examination is appropriate. Any time we add extra time to the process, it will take more time than it used to take obviously. But --

REP. TIERNEY: That's why you get the big time, yes.

MR. EDSON: Sorry about that. But what we're trying to do is to make sure that we have processes that are changing with time, changing as we get experience with this new environment, becoming more focused. The biggest surge in the special clearance requirements was a requirement against the targeted demographic that was put in place in January of 2002. This is the first student season, the student rush, if you will, that we've had to face with that requirement.

And I think the incredible volume, the additional volume of cases that have been added since 9/11 and that case load in particular which didn't target students -- it had nothing to do with students but it swept up a lot of students. That strained the resources and the processes in place at the FBI and the CIA and the Department of State, in particular. I think we've come a long way to ensuring that that doesn't happen in quite that way in December -- and hopefully it won't happen at all -- in December when we hit the next admissions period for schools.

REP. TIERNEY: Can you tell me, will the non-compliance with the terms of student visas, is that focused or impact on any one particular country or countries? Will you see more of it happening? Or is it spread pretty well across?

MR. EDSON: If we take the State Department's point of view, we are picking that up anecdotally as we process cases overseas. It's a little -- we don't have a statistical basis for identifying that.

MR. WARD: I think that actually the magnitude may be fairly low because it's not in the self-interest of a person on a student visa who may get an advanced degree and may want to be a professional in the U.S. for one and eventually to be an immigrant, a visa and any irregularity in the student visa is going obviously to make it difficult to get an immigrant visa. So, the incentive of somebody who wants to stay illegally as distinct to somebody who wants to be an immigrant with presumably an advanced degree. You know, I just don't think the incentives are there to do that. I'm sure it happens but I don't think the magnitude is that great.

Of course, the SEVIS system, by having the schools report the completion of the program, will allow the schools and INS to work together to make sure that person leaves, which, by the way, I did when I completed my degree. I got a letter saying, you know, within one month, you should leave the United States. This I did. I later came back thankfully but in those days, there was actually a very similar system in place in the 1960s where your arrival at the school and registration was noted by the school and sent to INS on the completion and you actually received notification of that. So we really actually are going back to a computerized version of a system we had when we had far fewer students coming here.

REP. TIERNEY: Thank you.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you.

Mr. Osborne.

REP. TOM OSBORNE (R-NE): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just a couple of quick questions, Mr. Fine. Sort of a general question. But if you could identify one thing in the short term that you think would enhance our security in regard to student visas, what would you recommend?

MR. FINE: I believe that the INS is going down the right route. They need to ensure that the high risk schools receive site visits. They also need to ensure that the schools representatives and the INS officers who are overseeing that program are properly trained and know what to put in the system because if there is not good information in the system, it can't be used. It can't be helpful. And the information that comes out needs to be followed up on. So the SEVIS will help but it's only as good as it's used.

REP. OSBORNE: From what you've seen in the proposal, the SEVIS proposal that we have before us, do you feel that there is any obvious loopholes in there from the viewpoint of the Department of Justice?

MR. FINE: No, I don't believe there are any obvious loopholes. I think they are proceeding down the appropriate track. I do have concerns, as I have stated, whether they can do all that needs to be done to have it fully implemented by January. I do have a concern about part-time students and whether part-time students will be covered in the particular categories that we discussed. By and large, I think the plan that they have is a good one. It's just a question of implementing it and implementing it in a timely fashion.

REP. OSBORNE: I guess that relates to my next question.

Dr. Ward, I believe that you've indicated that January 30th deadline is going to be very difficult to meet if not impossible from the standpoint of schools and at the same time, INS has asserted that everyone can be ready. And I just wonder how you justify or how you would rationalize this discrepancy and obviously somebody is probably not correct here.

MR. WARD: Well, I mean, we'll be as happy if everything that we've been assured about today by Ms. Sposato is the case. I mean, if I'm just crying wolf, I would just say this would be wonderful. January 1, everything is ready and the schools can enter and by 31st of January, everything is working. If that were the case, I would regret my testimony. You know, I mean, I'd be happy about it. But I think to protect schools, if there are any system problems in entering the data, if there are problems with the training of both our people and her people, the batch processing, I just simply do not know and certainly the schools that have large numbers of foreign students, like my own, with 4,000 foreign students in Wisconsin. I talked to those people. The magnitude of the challenge here is so great they're apprehensive it won't be ready.

The actual regulations, the law of the land, we don't have them right now. Admittedly we have draft regulations. So that all our preparations in this window make me very apprehensive and I would hate to be dishonest in saying that I'm confident that everything will be right. I hope and sincerely hope everything will be right and my anxieties are unfounded, but I think my anxieties are well-founded and it would be better that we face that reality and that contingency rather than just ignore them.

REP. OSBORNE: So are you suggesting that the deadline be extended?

MR. WARD: No. What I hope is that if the deadline -- there are still some problems -- we have a contingent deadline which can then be realistically set for us to complete what cannot be completed at that time. I mean, if INS believe they can do this, best thing is to -- let's together to see if we can get there. And then if it doesn't work, rather than it being a blame situation, to them maybe set another deadline that allows us to remove the wrinkles of this very massive enterprise.

REP. OSBORNE: Of course, one of the problems of a contingent deadline is that often times it can become the target very quickly --

MR. WARD: Yeah, I'm not --

REP. OSBORNE: You know, you begin to look at a fallback and say, well, we really don't have to have it done until that time and that would certainly be a concern. But as I understand it, there were really two major problems. Number one, students many times would apply to multiple universities and colleges and nobody knew for sure which one they went to. And then when they went someplace, often times they didn't stay there. And you all feel that you've addressed those two issues pretty well with this plan?

MR. WARD: And I think before, remember the student had to -- they may have been issued with I-20s from several schools but the visa would be issued for one. So again, I think even in the old system there was potential for there to be a problem but the system was not designed to create the problem. But I think SEVIS is a very effective system of solving almost all the problems that came up in terms of knowing what students were doing once they were issued a visa.

But remember again, in terms of the security issue, these are half a million people about who we know a lot. They've made applications to schools, they've often had letters of recommendation. And we do know a lot about them and we're focusing on them rightly, but this is 1.5 percent of all visas issued. So I do wish -- I do hope that Congress recognizes that while we can help address the security issue by tightening this tracking system, there is a huge issue in terms of visitors' visas, over about whom we know very little. Much less than we do about students. So I do think we have to -- you know, that's a different issue, I understand, but I do think that's another matter that we need on the record.

REP. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Mr. Scott.

REP. ROBERT C. SCOTT (D-VA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The numbers we've heard, about 7,500 to 10,000 schools, half a million students give or take, 300 million other border crossings, are those numbers about right?

MS. SPOSATO: Yes, I believe they are.

REP. SCOTT: Okay. We've heard that analysis of looking for a needle in the haystack. I guess my question is whether we're even looking in the right haystack. If this thing gets up and running and is working, how many students do we expect in any time to be out of compliance?

MS. SPOSATO: I honestly don't know.

REP. SCOTT: Because of just trifling, not getting the paperwork in right. Nobody knows? Okay, well, after you find somebody out of compliance, what will happen?

MS. SPOSATO: As I describe in my testimony, the information will be referred to the enforcement part of INS. They have hired a contractor to help them analyze the data about people found to be in noncompliance. There'll be some contact with the school to ensure that the data is not incorrect, that it, you know, wasn't just a failure by the school to --

REP. SCOTT: How long after you ascertain that the person is out of compliance? How long will it take to get to that point? How many months?

MS. SPOSATO: I don't think it should take months. You know, I think that it will be referred automatically by the INS district officer who will have the information almost immediately. And how long the follow-up takes is going to depend on the situation. There'll be -- the reason they're referring it first for an analytic review is to look at things like other databases to see is the person wanted for anything, have they left the country and does our exit system show that? There'll be times --

REP. SCOTT: Well, this list of students that happen to be out of compliance I suspect is much about trifling paperwork as any kind of indicia of terrorism. How does all of this relate to protecting the country from terrorists. We heard about people getting in on fraudulent visas. What portion are getting fraudulent visas school information -- what portion of those are terrorists and what portion of those are just cheating to get an education? Is there any reason why we ought to be looking at this haystack at all rather than the other 299 and a half million border crossings? What makes this group so dangerous?

MS. SPOSATO: It's not my position that this is a particularly dangerous group. I think the INS is working on a lot of different programs in a lot of different directions. The hearing today is about the student tracking system and the student tracking program. There's an entry-exit pogrom that is a very large endeavor for the INS. It's looking at all visitors.

REP. SCOTT: Well, you've got high-risk schools and low-risk schools. I've got several schools, Old Dominion University has a lot of international students. If someone is out of compliance, is that any cause of alarm that there may be some terrorism going on or you just have a trifling student that just flunked out?

MS. SPOSATO: I don't believe that INS is going to jump to the conclusion that somebody is a terrorist because they're out of student status.

REP. SCOTT: Are there any other indicia of danger other than just status? I mean, you've got high-risk schools, you've got high- risk -- and with somebody taking a history course would be different from somebody taking flight training. Yes? No? I mean, they're equal danger? Are they of equal danger? I mean, is -- we're just looking at student status. I mean, I thought all of this was to try to protect us from terrorism. Is just the status of being out of compliance an indicia of danger without anything else? I mean, where is the analysis that we even ought to be looking at this haystack?

MR. FINE: Mr. Scott, I believe that it is not -- just being out of status is not necessarily an indicia of danger but I do believe that this is one effort that needs to be taken to ensure that the INS knows where students are, knows if they're out of status and can look at other measures to take with regard to prioritizing, whether there's other intelligence information regarding them, or if they are looking for a student and want to find a particular student, where that student is, is that student in status or not? And I totally agree that this is just one small measure in a larger picture.

REP. SCOTT: I guess where in this chart is -- where in this chart will it make it more difficult if you have a terrorist who's going to be careful with his paperwork? How will all of this operation protect us from terrorism?

MS. SPOSATO: In and of itself, SEVIS is not a system that is intended to prevent terrorism. It is intended to track people and their immigration status as a student. So if a terrorist is scrupulous about attending class and maintaining his status, there's nothing in this system that will help us. However, the State Department and the INS have other processes in place in which they're doing their best to prohibit the admission of people who are suspected terrorists.

REP. SCOTT: Can I -- just one other question, Mr. Chairman, to Mr. Fine, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Justice. Of all the things that we could spend money on, is this a high priority?

MR. FINE: I don't know if this is the highest priority. I do think this should be a priority, along with the entry-exit system in order to determine the status of students and to prevent the complete dysfunctional program that exists right now. We have no idea whether students attended or not --

REP. SCOTT: In terms of protecting us from terrorism, should this be a high priority?

MR. FINE: I think this should be a high priority, yes.

REP. SCOTT: Thank you.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you, Mr. Scott.

Mr. Johnson.

REP. JOHNSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate Mr. Scott's questions. I'm disappointed that you wouldn't answer them. We're getting the same treatment from you that we get in other committees from the INS. Can you confirm for me or not that some colleges offer exchange or temporary students Social Security cards if they will come to their school, even though they don't work?

MS. SPOSATO: I don't know that to be the case.

REP. JOHNSON: Well, I know it is the case in some instances. Maybe -- you shook your head. Are you aware? If someone comes to a school and doesn't work but is given a work permit, do you in the INS -- are you the ones that give work permits?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, we don't give Social Security cards. That's the --

REP. JOHNSON: I understand. I didn't ask you that question. I asked if you gave work permits to students.

MS. SPOSATO: There are some situations in which a student is allowed to work on an F&M visa under this system, and those are largely situations where the work is related to the course of study, like nursing or something like that. But by and large when you come on a student visa, you're not here to work.

REP. JOHNSON: But they do issue work permits. Is that true or false?

MS. SPOSATO: You don't get a separate work permit, so to speak. You can be authorized under your student visa to do a limited amount of work related to your course of studies.

REP. JOHNSON: And --

MS. SPOSATO: And that is recorded in the system and authorized.

REP. JOHNSON: Okay. Do you track those students separately?

MS. SPOSATO: Yes, that is tracked in the system.

REP. JOHNSON: And --

MS. SPOSATO: A school has to report that it is authorizing that kind of work related to study, and they have to put that into the system.

REP. JOHNSON: And then they're authorized to get a Social Security card. Is that not true?

MS. SPOSATO: Is that correct?

MR. WARD: I think it's automatic.

REP. JOHNSON: Absolutely. And your system doesn't talk to the Social Security system, I don't think. Can you --

MR. WARD: Well, I think that what you're hearing is that under a student visa you can apply for permission to work on campus.

REP. JOHNSON: Right. Is it part time or full time? I understand some of them are full-time work.

MR. WARD: It might be, but the majority are part time. It would depend on the -- there are academic rules that prevent full and part- time work too. And that -- I think that once request is -- that would be entered in as a characteristic of the student, that there was a request obviously for some part-time work. I don't know about the full time because that's something -- I think there would be some academic problems with that. And then I believe it's automatic that you can, upon receiving permission to work, receive a Social Security number.

REP. JOHNSON: You can apply for one and theoretically the Social Security Administration will give it to you. They will check with the INS to see that they have, I think, legal right to work. Go ahead.

MS. SPOSATO: That is correct. They do check with INS about the status of the individual who's applying for a Social Security card.

REP. JOHNSON: Okay. And when the student goes back home, or leaves the country for any reason, what happens to the Social Security number?

MS. SPOSATO: I believe the Social Security number is --

MR. WARD: Well, it becomes --

MS. SPOSATO: -- maintained.

REP. JOHNSON: The Social Security Administration issues Social Security numbers for life. If a person leaves the country and comes back in, he still has that Social Security number. Now, what's to prevent a terrorist from coming back in under a student visa, having already obtained a Social Security number and using that as a method of identification in this country, which it's being used for day in and day out? Do you in the INS check that stuff?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, we're not checking people's Social Security numbers. I mean, in order to get the student visa they would have to apply to a school and be accepted and the --

REP. JOHNSON: The Inspector General know anything about that?

MR. FINE: No, I don't know anything about the Social Security checking by the INS. I don't.

REP. JOHNSON: Do the computers of all our agencies talk to one another? In other words, I'm told that State and INS and Social Security, none of them talk to each other. Is that true or false? Or are they trying to get there?

MR. FINE: I wouldn't say that none of them talk to each other. They're trying to improve their communication interagency of information technology, and I know there is significant interaction between the State Department and the INS.

MR. EDSON: Right. Between the State Department and the INS we've had data sharing arrangements for over a decade now and all of our non-immigrant visa transaction records overseas, our immigrant visa records are available to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

REP. JOHNSON: I would appreciate it if you'd put checking student work visas into your program, so that we know in the future if these people are coming over here under any pretense at all, to get a work permit and a Social Security number and thereby circumvent the system.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the time.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you. It's my understanding, Mr. Tiberi, you have no questions? All right.

Ms. McCollum, I understand you have a few additional questions. You're recognized for five minutes.

REP. McCOLLUM: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just to go back to the question of whether or not -- and I mean this very sincerely. We appropriate and you only have so many dollars to work with at the INS. I'm just trying to figure out how much we should be asking for you. I'm not criticizing you working with the amount of dollars that you have.

To the Department of Justice, in your testimony on page four, and I quote, "We conclude that unless the INS devotes sufficient resources and effort to implementing a new SEVIS effectively, many of its current problems in tracking and monitoring foreign students who come to the United States to attend school will continue to exist." And that is the spirit in which I ask the question: where is the budget on this? What should I be working to help appropriate? Are we going to make this a fee-driven system if we don't support it here, that all of a sudden students in our colleges and universities are paying for the federal government's responsibility in keeping the homeland safe?

MS. SPOSATO: Congress has mandated that the SEVIS system be developed, that it be developed by a certain date and that it be maintained by a student fee. So I think those are things that -- as a career employee, those are givens for me. I realize that the congresswoman would like to have the budget, and that is material I will provide to you after the hearing.

REP. McCOLLUM: Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to go back to when I asked about high risk and low risk schools. Maybe I misunderstood a statement that was made out there, because I'm hearing two conflicting things and maybe you can clear this up for me, who ever is at the table. I hear -- and I see in documentation from the Justice Department clearly talking about high risk and low risk schools. When I asked INS about high risk and low risk schools, I was given information that I heard to say that you really didn't have an assessment as to which schools are high risk and low risk. So do we have confusion right here at the table?

MS. SPOSATO: As I explained, INS does intend to set its priorities for its site visits based upon some risk analysis of which schools are -- we have more information about and therefore are less risk to us. We have yet to do that risk analysis, so we have not set any priorities for the site visits. We have plenty of contractors available to begin them and that's something we plan to do over the course of the fall.

But we do not have schools in categories of high or low risk. And I think it's a complicated problem. You have to ask yourself what kind of risk are you talking about: a risk that the school won't comply with SEVIS, a risk that the school doesn't exist, or a risk that the school will admit terrorist applicants? So all of that I think we have to look at over the fall and make some determinations about.

And I'm not -- maybe the Inspector General wants to talk --

REP. McCOLLUM: Mr. Chair, if Mr. Fine could help me out with this?

MR. FINE: Sure. Obviously schools that are accredited institutions, universities, colleges that have been accredited, have been complying with the SEVIS -- with the foreign student program, would be less of a risk. And there's no question about their bona fides. That doesn't necessarily mean that down the road they shouldn't be visited or certified to see whether they're complying with the requirements of SEVIS. But smaller vocational schools, flight schools, language schools, they seem to fit into the category of a higher risk for not complying with the foreign student program requirements.

REP. McCOLLUM: Well, Mr. Chair, here is where some of my problem with this high risk/low risk comes in. Because we had a situation, a tragic situation on September 11 that dealt with individuals who attended flight schools, we have assumed that all terrorists who come in under student visa are going to go to either a vocational school or a training school. See, Mr. Scott's point, if I'm savvy, I keep up on my paperwork and I'm a terrorist, I can go any place and maybe even not be out there where State, Justice and INS are looking at me.

I might already have taken my flight training back in Country X. So I would really like to understand -- and we don't have to get into it today, Mr. Chair -- just how -- are we -- should we be determining the risk of a school? Or should we be working with the State Department to determining the risk of the person? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you. I think the -- hopefully the steps that we're putting in place address all those issues. The State Department, through the processes, is going back and assessing the risk of individuals that are applying for student visas. That's what I'm understanding part of the delay is out at the embassies around the world, is that there is now more work required of State Department folks to assess people coming in. Is that correct?

MR. EDSON: That is correct. On both State Department folks in the field -- in our interviewing process and review process in the field, and then in addition for people who cross certain thresholds established in cooperation with the intelligence and law enforcement folks. Special clearance procedures requiring a review back here in Washington.

REP. HOEKSTRA: And then I think what Mr. Scott and you were both talking about is, you know, the risk of the institutions and terrorists. I think what we ask the INS to do is we want them to put in better procedures to track the 300 million visitors that we get every year. And the small visa responsibility that this subcommittee has is for those 500,000 students that come in on student visas.

I'm just saying this nation wants a better system of tracking -- number one, determining who we are going to permit in, and then tracking that when they come in under a certain set of requirements, that we hold those people to those requirements that they agreed to when they decided to visit. And student visas it's, you know, we're going to come, we're going to go to school and when that commitment is ended for whatever reason, we expect them to leave.

And it's the same thing that you get on, I guess, visitor visas where people agree to come in for a certain period of time and responsibility for INS is going to be if they agree to come in for 90 days or they agree to come in for 180 or a year. When that visa expires, the expectation is that it will either be renewed or whatever, or they will leave the country. And that is INS's responsibility, to make sure that they monitor the folks that we let in.

And actually the risk may not be -- INS probably can't necessarily determine the terrorist. The risk may be the schools that are out there that in the past have not complied and have not, you know, gone through the process. Those may end up being a higher risk to us than perhaps what their curriculum is. But that is what we will wait for the State -- or for INS to determine exactly how they identify what schools are higher risk rather than lower risk. And if they come out with a ranking mechanism that we don't agree with, we may decide to give them a little bit more guidance and direction from Congress as to how they define high and low risk.

With that, I will yield to my colleague Mr. McKeon.

REP. McKEON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've enjoyed this hearing today. I think it's been very enlightening and it's, I think, shown how large the problem is. When we live in a free society and have basically open borders, it's pretty easy to get into the country when we see 300 million entrances and exits a year, 500,000 of them are students. And we've focused on just students today, even though two out of the 18 terrorists came in on student visas, we've put -- I mean, that's the jurisdiction of this committee is education, so that's our part of the responsibility. But it looks to me like a huge problem. Looks to me like we have a lot of people that are working very hard to do a better job of keeping track of people.

It seems to me that if a terrorist really wanted to, they could find a way to come in, whether it be a student visa or any other kind of visiting visa. But, as I said, our responsibility is the education part and the student visas. So I have two more specific questions and then a recommendation for the INS, again.

Is the INS fully prepared to certify or re-certify schools through the SEVIS system by January 31, 2003? The inexperience of those schools seeking certification under the volunteer program reported delays of 30 days to be given password authority into SEVIS. Is this system capable of handling this function in a timely manner?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, I believe that we are. The 30 day delay -- you know, you don't get your password to get into the system until we've looked at you and determined that you warrant entry into the system. The schools that have been given that authority already have been given it by a core group of -- a small group of headquarters employees. We have 80 employees plus in the field ready to receive these investigative reports, and we have a contingency plan where we will prioritize things if we are flooded with applications on the last day. I neglected to say that --

REP. McKEON: I'm not meaning to be critical, but this reminds me of a problem we had with student loans a few years back. And you get to a point where you're getting further and further behind. We have basically three months left and my familiarity with the schools indicates that they take off a few weeks in December, there are not going to be people there to work.

And I'm really concerned that from July to now we've put in a thousand schools, and those were schools we already were working with. And some of those we found aren't even schools. And then in the next 30 days we're planning on putting in the other 5,500, 6,500, 7,500. I just think we're probably not being realistic and, as has been mentioned, we'd probably better have a fallback position and be realistic about that.

The next question: will all F and J individuals, new or continuing, arriving on or after February 1, 2003, be required to have a SEVIS document? Or will documents issued before January 31, 2003, be considered valid for entry? Or will F and J visas currently -- I'll give this to you and you can answer this on the record. In fact, I'll just do that and not have to have you write that all out right now.

But I would like to commend you for the work you're doing. I think this is very important work and it's a huge job. And I guess, as has been pointed out by others in their questioning, even if we tracked every single student and if they all complied, I don't know if we have adequate information here in SEVIS indicating that if a student enrolls and then does attend class for 30 days -- a lot of schools don't take attendance. I don't know how we'll know if they're there, and we don't know if they drop out.

How will we ever get this information to the appropriate law enforcement that they could look up and then, after they've looked them up and found them, found if they just got tired of going to school or were in fact a terrorist. It's a very large country and a very big problem.

The recommendation I have is when you go through this chart that you've shown us on the SEVIS here and you're going to address information that goes back and forth between the schools after they've selected, and in the original process, if you -- when you write those regulations, before that's finally disseminated would you pick a few people from the schools that actually deal with this and run that by them before you send it out as something official?

MS. SPOSATO: The --

REP. McKEON: They might be able to find some --

MS. SPOSATO: The regulations that we published in May set forth the requirements -- the proposed requirements for the schools on the information that they need to enter into SEVIS and the timing for that. And the schools have commented, which is one of the reasons that it takes time to get your final reg out. But we do have many comments from the schools.

REP. McKEON: Okay. So you're not writing more? You're just going to write a final document based on --

MS. SPOSATO: That's correct. Based on the comments that we have.

REP. McKEON: Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you.

I just want to reinforce the -- I think the point that Ms. McCollum was making a little bit earlier of the fee and she's asked about the funding. I think what she's also -- I'm thinking maybe what you're driving at and maybe you can correct me, but that -- about the fees and that. We don't want to come back in February or March and hear that SEVIS isn't working because we didn't have enough resources. Is that --

REP. McCOLLUM: Yes.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Okay. And --

MS. SPOSATO: I understand that.

REP. HOEKSTRA: You understand, okay. I mean, that's -- this is your opportunity. I think she was providing you with an opportunity to say, well, you know, Congress just has never given us the resources to make this system work the way that you want and, you know, if we come back in March or April of next year and find out that SEVIS is not up and functioning, it's not working the schools, the contractors didn't work out. And then if INS comes back and says well, you asked us to do that on the cheap and how could you have expected us to get that done, this was your opportunity to say to say, you know, we can't do it with those resources or under those constraints. All right.

Mr. Scott.

REP. SCOTT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just wanted to follow up a little bit that 299 and a half border crossings. We're trying to find people that are going to be a danger to society and what we try to do is look at articulable indices of guilt. And it just seems to me that student status is not a good indicator. I mean, particularly when you don't separate out the courses. I think somebody taking a history course as opposed to somebody taking a course in explosives would constitute different kind of indications of suspicion. There are a lot of people crossing the border every day. You've got focusing your resources -- you mentioned 80 employees at one stage, you mentioned 1,500 contractors some other time.

I mean, that's a lot of assets, a great deal of focus of our assets on this and I haven't -- just frankly haven't heard why we ought to be so suspicious of people going to major universities certainly taking courses, as opposed to a lot of other places we could be focusing the resources, particularly since, even if these things work -- INS has indicated that we're going to know it immediately. I think the gentleman from California indicated, you know, if you drop out of school, even if this thing works perfectly, you're not going to know for several months and if somebody's here for evil purposes, it's going to be months down the line before this system can ever catch up with them.

Maybe somebody can indicate why we ought to be suspicious of students more than workers, visitors or anybody else? Where is the indication that this is a dangerous group of people to be looking at?

MS. SPOSATO: I'd like to reply in that I am not somebody who is suspicious of students. I think they're a wonderful addition. I went to a college that had many foreign students. I think they were a wonderful addition to my college and my university, and I'm not particularly suspicious of students. Congress passed a law that required INS to put in place this tracking system and that's what we're about. It's not a suspicion particularly of students.

REP. SCOTT: Dr. Ward, should we be suspicious of these students?

MR. WARD: No, but I do think that in a new security environment with the aid of computers with massive data capacity, dealing with visitor and student status in a more systematic way is a good idea. I don't think it can substitute for intelligence. It does strike me if we have the capacity to do something like SEVIS, which of course is really just replacing what we did on paper some time ago, and I do think there's some value in systematically dealing with these things. It also, I think, will treat students better because one of the problems of the current unsystematic system is there is often logjams and poor treatment in getting the visa, just because the management structure was not effectively cross-wired between education, state and so on.

I see this simply as a management improvement that will have some possibility of filtering out security issues. But ultimately security is an intelligence issue and that's why I raised earlier that all people who enter this country, we need to have some sort of tracking that allows us -- and I think the data systems we have now permit us to do that.

REP. SCOTT: Does this seem to you to be a particularly complicated data entry system because all I saw up there was the name, address and a couple of other things?

MR. WARD: Right. No, in scale it is, but in complexity, no.

REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you, Mr. Scott.

You know, we've asked the question a couple of times of why we're tracking or why we're asking these folks to track this information. They're tracking it because Congress told them to.

REP. SCOTT: Mr. Chairman, I don't think that means that it's necessarily the right thing to do or --

REP. HOEKSTRA: No, I know.

REP. SCOTT: And we've heard the word intelligence used around here --

(Laughter.)

REP. HOEKSTRA: But it was actually the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 probably went through Judiciary -- yeah.

(Laughter.)

The attorney general shall develop and conduct a program to collect from approved institutions of higher education and designated exchange visitor programs in the United States the information described in subsection C. And they have the status or are applying for the status of non-immigrants under subparagraph F, J or M -- I think those must be your student visas. So, you know, these folks are just responding to what you in your ultimate wisdom as part of the Judiciary Committee asked them to do and what you got the rest of Congress to agree to do. And I don't know whether you voted for that bill or not.

REP. McCOLLUM: I wasn't here.

(Laughter.)

REP. HOEKSTRA: Ms. McCollum was not here.

(Laughter.)

Okay, we'll leave it at that. I don't think there's any additional questions. I'd like to thank the witnesses, the members for their time today. Thank you for participating here and the joint subcommittee will be adjourned.

(Adjourn)

END

LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2002