Copyright 2002 Federal News Service, Inc.  
Federal News Service
September 18, 2002 Wednesday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING

LENGTH: 14177 words

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE IMMIGRATION, BORDER SECURITY, AND CLAIMS SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
 
SUBJECT: IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FOREIGN STUDENT TRACKING PROGRAM BY THE IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
 
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE GEORGE W. GEKAS (R-PA)
 
LOCATION: 2237 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

WITNESSES: JANIS SPOSATO, ASSISTANT DEPUTY EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER FOR THE IMMIGRATION SERVICES DIVISION, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE;
 
GLENN A. FINE, INSPECTOR GENERAL, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE;
 
CATHERYN D. COTTEN, DIRECTOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL OFFICE, DUKE UNIVERSITY;
 
DR. TERRY W. HARTLE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, AMERICAN COUNCIL ON EDUCATION
 


BODY:
REP. GEORGE W. GEKAS (R-PA): The hour of 10 o'clock having arrived, the committee will come to order. Because the rules of the House, and therefore the rules of the committee, require two members to be present for any hearing, we are compelled to recess until a second member should appear. The fall of the gavel has kept faith with our intent to start every hearing and every meeting in which we're involved on time, so we can say that we started this on time. Now I have a choice of banging the gavel again to recess until the second member comes, or to read Shakespeare's sonnets until someone should appear. The better judgment will be to recess until the second member should appear. We stand in recess.

(Recess)

The entry and soon to take a seat by the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Flake, thus a hearing quorum has been constituted and the recess has been concluded. We will proceed with opening statements of which one will be from the chair.

This hearing has been called of course to examine, as fully as we can, the current status and, to what extent it's relevant, the history of the Foreign Student Tracking System. Many will recall that in the year 2000 the Special Commission on Terrorism took note of what it considered to be big loopholes and flaws in the then tracking system that was in existence. And it wasn't until we suffered the attacks on September 11th and prior to that of course the World Trade Center bombings in 1993 that we began to wonder and ponder ourselves about the tracking system.

The '93 incident where the World Trade Center was the subject of the attack, the evidence showed that a Jordanian national was at the epicenter of the activities that led to and touched off those bombings. Why is that important? He had entered the United States on a student visa in 1989 and entered the Wichita State University in Kansas. The evidence shows that after three semesters he had dropped out later to join a group of terrorists. That's exactly what we are concerned about in the overall effect of and the apparatus building in tracking these foreign students.

Then following that in 1995 the INS report concluded that, as we all know, that there is a great public concern about the whereabouts of the students who enter our country. How did they enter and why were they granted a student visa in the first place? Once they entered did we then forever set them aside and never know when they'll be completing their course in a particular institution? What exactly has happened to that student? So we crept upwards in this problem. In 1996 Congress required that the INS set up the automated student tracking system that would be operational in all institutions of higher education by 1998.

Now we had taken a giant step we thought, and then September 11th occurred and the whole world knows that three of the terrorists there were students in the United States pursuant to student visas. And we were all startled to learn that this was just a small example of the number of people who are untracked that come into our country on these student visas and then disappear into our society or perhaps even return to their country without our ever knowing that that has occurred.

So we had further evidence compiled by the inspector general who found that the INS lacked accurate data about the schools that are authorized to accept foreign students. We've had numerous problems with the institutions of higher learning, almost a flaunting of the regulations and laws having to do with student track, in my judgment. And part of that problem has to do with whether or not they're duly certified and continuously examined by the INS to see what they have in place and how they deal with the visas that are issued that benefit their institutions.

As a matter of fact, I was given a note that the Chicago Tribune recently published an article about the certification and the accreditation of these institutions and I guess the thrust of the article was to the effect that some are not well examined and are not properly accredited and therefore should not be in a position to be able to issue student visas and yet it continues unabated. These are worrisome matters and will be the subject of some of the testimony that our witnesses will be offering and will be the subject of some of the questions that we'll be offering to the panel.

So now where are we? The outcome was that since September 11th and the passage of the PATRIOT Act which authorized more than $36 million to implement and expand the Foreign Student Tracking System, we have moved forward to the new solution for this problem, the SEVIS program, the student tracking program that is in place now and which is to be completed by January of 2003, that is, it is to be fully in operational status by 2003.

The inspector general has concluded that if implementation of SEVIS is delayed, the INS will continue to operate a system in which it knows little about the schools and the students that participate in the Foreign Student Program. This is exactly why we are here. Of course, even if the INS is able to implement SEVIS, it must still devote adequate resources to analyze the data on a continuing basis as it appears and as it is compiled, to ask for additional resources for every phase of the program, including on how to detect fraud and to take remedial steps, because there's rampant fraud even in this visa system that applies to foreign students.

One other point. You will recall that in part of my opening remarks I was determined to assert that the schools of higher education where somewhat lax over the years in tracking their own students who came through their institutions via the visa, the student visa. It is the pattern among our educational institutions that they designate a particular individual in their own bureaucracy to pay attention to the student visas. And there we have found -- others have found and reported to us that there is a patchwork of DSO capability, patchwork of DSO continuity or satisfaction with the job at hand, the training that would go into how a DSO can proceed to monitor all the student visas that come to that institution. All of that is a separate problem which we've faced continuously and which we want to confront today during this very hearing.

We have instituted a legislative initiative to improve the lot of the DSO and the status of the DSO and the effectiveness of the DSO. And Chairman Sensenbrenner of the Judiciary Committee and others have promoted the idea and are interested in coming to a legislative and/or bureaucratic set of decisions governing that very same problem.

We now note the presence of the gentleman from California, Mr. Gallegly, and we are prepared to entertain Mr. Flake if he wishes to make an opening statement.

REP. JEFF FLAKE (R-AZ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have no statement and I just comment the chairman for calling this hearing and I'm looking forward to the testimony.

REP. GEKAS: Does the gentleman from California wish to make an opening statement?

REP. ELTON GALLEGLY (R-CA): Mr. Chairman, I always wish to make an opening statement, but in the interest of time and I know that we are really here today to hear from our witnesses, so with that in mind I would yield back to the chair.

REP. GEKAS: Thank you. We will proceed with introduction of the four witnesses who have appeared before us.

Janis Ann Sposato, assistant deputy executive associate commissioner for the Immigration Services Division at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, who has served with the Department of Justice since 1975. She started as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section. She next served as special assistant to the assistant attorney general in the Civil Division before going to the Office of Legal Counsel. From there Ms. Sposato went to the Justice Management Division where she was general counsel and deputy assistant attorney general before coming to the INS. She received her bachelor's degree from Mount Holyoke College and her JD from Columbia Law School.

And joining her at the witness table is the Honorable Glenn A. Fine, the inspector general at the United States Department of Justice who has been with us many times in previous hearings. He has served as acting inspector general from August 2000 to December 2000, was confirmed as inspector general in December of 2000. He has worked for the Inspector General's Office since January 1995, was in private practice, labor and employment law from '89 to '95. He served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia 1986 through '89. He's a graduate of Harvard College and Law School and was a Rhodes scholar.

Catheryn D. Cotten is with us as well, director of the International Office at Duke University. At Duke University she works with federal and state agencies and public and private organizations to ensure compliance with laws and regulations governing foreign students and to maximize international education and exchange opportunities for Duke's faculty, staff and students. Ms. Cotten has worked as a consultant and participant in the various projects on student visas since 1996. She was chair of the Exchange Visitor Working Group at NAFSA, Association of International Educators from 1999 through 2001.

She served as a consultant and participant in the United States Information Agency's Exchange Visitor Program Reinventing Government Lab in 1999. She has authored many articles and foreign student publications and has been in Who's Who in America sine 1997. The graduated from her own Duke University in a bachelor's degree in anthropology.

The final introduction is that of Dr. Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs, American Council on Education. Dr. Hartle directs government relations and public affairs activity for the 1,800 colleges and universities that belong to the American Council on Education. Before joining the council in 1993, Dr. Hartle was the education staff director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. Prior to working with the Senate he was resident fellow and director of social policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research from 1984 to 1987.

He served as a research scientists for the Education Testing Service from 1975 to 1984. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Hiram College in Ohio and received a masters in public administration from Syracuse University and a doctorate in public policy from the George Washington University.

We want the record to indicate that the gentleman from Pennsylvania -- or the lady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Hart, is present and accounted for. And Congressman Cannon has joined us as well, the gentleman from Utah.

We have more than a quorum and we shall proceed with the testimony. As is per our custom, the written statements that you have offered will automatically become a part of the record, without objection, and we ask you to summarize as best you can within the five minutes that we will allot to you and we will allow you to complete some of your thoughts, of course, under the pressure of the cross- examination that will follow. We will begin in the order in which we introduced our witnesses, with Ms. Sposato.

MS. JANIS SPOSATO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be here today to update you on the progress --

REP. GEKAS: The microphone, please. Put the microphone closer.

MS. SPOSATO: Okay.

REP. GEKAS: Thank you.

MS. SPOSATO: I appreciate the opportunity to update you on the progress that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has made in implementing its new computer system, SEVIS, that will greatly enhance our ability to track and monitor foreign students in the United States.

Since this spring we've made considerable progress on the project and it has taken us a long way toward meeting the congressionally mandated goal of January 31st -- January 1st, 2003 for full implementation of the system. This Internet-based system will maintain important and up to date information about foreign students and exchange visitors and their dependents, and it will allow for electronic access to the system. Schools will enter data, the State Department will enter data, the Department of Justice will enter data, and then appropriate people may get access to appropriate amounts of that data.

For those of you who like visual aids I brought a few pictures of the part of the system that we have already deployed. Those are just pictures of the screens that are there. We made our first and primary module of SEVIS available to schools this past July. This module permits the tracking of academic and technical students. We started accepting applications for school enrolment in SEVIS on July 1. As of yesterday, more than 2,100 schools were involved in the process of enrolling in SEVIS. Over 900 have been preliminary approved and our now using the system, and an additional 489 have submitted applications which are under review today. There is an additional 625 in the process of completing their application.

As part of the school approval process, INS is trying to strengthen its control over the institutions authorized to admit the foreign students. At the same time, we want to ensure that all eligible schools are enrolled in SEVIS in a timely manner. In order to meet both of these competing goals, we've implemented a phased process of school enrolment involving preliminary enrolment of certain accredited schools and immediate site visits for others.

Because SEVIS is new, we believe it is important that we conduct a site visit of every single school, and we do plan to do that. These visits will allow us to verify that the school is bona fide, but equally important, it will help us to ensure that the record keeping and reporting responsibilities of the schools are met. While the first and primary module of SEVIS was deployed in July, we have much work ahead of us.

During the fall, we will engage in an ambitious school enrolment process for the remaining schools, using contract investigators to conduct the site visit. On or about October 1, we will deploy a module of SEVIS that will allow the schools who choose to do so to enter their data directly from the internal school computer systems. Next week, we will make the so-called batch processing module available to schools for testing and I've brought some handouts for any schools here that are interested in that. It will tell you how to get to the Internet site to do that testing. In the late fall, we will deploy the SEVIS module for tracking exchange visitors.

If we can keep to our schedules, SEVIS will be fully deployed on January 1st. We are doing everything we can to meet that schedule and frankly, the toughest part is behind us.

INS has been working aggressively to provide schools with all the information they need to participate fully in SEVIS and that includes technical specifications for batch processing and reporting requirements. We launched this outreach long before we deployed any software. Over the past year, INS participated in over 100 seminars across the country for school officials, vendors and the general public and we're continuing to do this.

We have, among other things, also created a toll free center dedicated solely to answering SEVIS related questions and a web page where we post policy memos, proposed regulations and other pertinent information. We published the proposed rules governing SEVIS implementation in the federal register on May 16, and we have received many comments. We will absorb those comments, we've largely done that, and move that through the administration approval process in the next week.

The efforts I have discussed, in combination with those outlined in my written testimony, have put INS firmly on track to meet the January 1 deadline that Congress set for full implementation of the system. Although the Department of Justice inspector general issued a report in May that questioned our ability to have this system fully functional by that date, we are determined to meet the deadline.

At the time the I.G. studied the program, INS did not have its deployment plan, including its use of contract investigators, in place. To his credit, the inspector general and his staff have supported us in our implementation of efforts since May, and I would venture to say that this is one case where my esteemed colleague wouldn't mind being wrong. We will all be winners when the system is fully deployed.

Mr. Chairman, the implementation of SEVIS will allow our nation to maintain its tradition of openness to international students with greater confidence that our friendship and sharing of knowledge with the rest of the world will not be abused. SEVIS will strengthen our security through tighter enforcement of our immigration laws.

Thank you and I'd be happy to answer questions.

REP. GEKAS: We thank the lady and we turn to Mr. Fine.

MR. GLENN A. FINE: Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify regarding the INS's implementation of SEVIS.

In a lengthy report we issued in May, 2002, the Office of the Inspector General examined several related issues. First, the INS's admissions into the country of two September 11th terrorists, Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi. Second, the INS's delayed notification to a flight school in March, 2002, six months after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 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 statement today will address SEVIS, the third issue. It will discuss the clear benefits of SEVIS, the significant progress the INS has made in implementing SEVIS and the continuing concerns the OIG has about the timely implementation of SEVIS. The INS previous database for recording information about the status of foreign students in schools 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 114 schools still in operation, 40 had incorrect addresses, 16 had incorrect names.

Our report concluded that SEVIS will address many of the INS' problems in tracking foreign students. For example, schools will enter information about students directly into SEVIS and INS and schools will be able to identify more easily when a student's change of status has been approved, when a student entered the United States and whether the student is attending school. Since we issued our report in May, the INS has made significant strides towards implementing SEVIS which I describe in more detail in my written statement. Yet, despite the substantial efforts made by the INS, 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 the training of INS employees and school officials in SEVIS, rather than with SEVIS's technical implementation. First, the INS intends to perform site visits of flight, vocational, language and other high risk schools but the longer delay in beginning these site visits, the less likely the INS will be able to complete all of them by January 30th.

We are also concerned about the INS's ability to adequately train and oversee the contractors who will be conducting the site visits. Because contractors 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. Also the INS has not agreed to devote full time personnel in the INS districts to SEVIS. We are concerned 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 the district will be responsible for SEVIS, there is no assurance that the appropriate INS personnel attended those training sessions.

SEVIS training must also be provided to INS adjudicators, inspectors and investigators. Similarly, the INS needs to provide training on SEVIS' 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.

In sum, I want to make clear that we believe that SEVIS will significantly enhance the INS' ability to track foreign students in the United States. We also believe that the INS should be credited for making significant strides in implementing SEVIS. 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 ensure that all high risk schools are certified through site visits by January 30th. Must dedicate sufficient resources to adequately training INS personnel and school officials. Must ensure that SEVIS is available at all ports of entry, service centers, district offices and consular posts. Must ensure that information from SEVIS is analyzed and used to identify noncompliant and fraudulent operations and must follow up when the SEVIS data indicates fraud in the program. We recognize that these will not be easy tasks but we believe they are necessary for SEVIS to achieve its full potential in improving the INS' foreign student program.

This concludes my prepared statement and I would be happy to answer any questions.

REP. GEKAS: We thank the gentleman and turn to Ms. Cotten.

MS. CATHERYN COTTEN: Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to be here as a representative school. We are one of the user schools of SEVIS.

My institution, Duke University, has over 2200 international students, scholars, professors and so on and we host hundreds of others a year in collaborations and so on.

We started to work with the 21 pilot schools and with Immigration in 1997/98 to build the CIPRIS/SEVIS system and we believe that that's been one of the more positive relationships that the schools have had with the Immigration Service in terms of cooperative work.

REP. GEKAS: Is the microphone turned on?

MS. COTTEN: Is this better?

REP. GEKAS: Okay. Yes.

We are the only school in the nation to have ever used a batch system to transmit data and we came into this cipher system a year late because it took us about that long to organize batch transmission. So while we are delighted to know that the batch will be available for testing soon, we are also concerned about the quality of the data that can be moved in that system and the way it will be moved. We know from experience that that is a trial and error situation but there's a great deal of work to be done in that regard.

In July, we became the first school in the nation to create a student document in the national SEVIS system. We had, of course, been creating hundreds before that in the pilot program. We did most of this work in SEVIS, all this work in SEVIS has been done manually. I must echo Mr. Fine's statements regarding the difference between having the SEVIS system fully available to schools and having the schools who are already recognized by Department of State as a fairly automatic admission to SEVIS and looking carefully at the high risk schools. That is quite a different thing from having all of the data from all of the schools, nearly a million records placed into the system by January. That simply cannot be done. I don't believe that the batch system will be sufficiently operational to do that for all of the schools. We won't have the testing time or the programming time. And if you look at it in terms of individual data entry manually at a school like Duke with say 2,000 people, we figure half an hour per person to do the data entry, that's 1,000 hours. Normal 40 hour work week, that is one person doing nothing all day every day but this work for six months.

The limited number of DSOs, the designated school officials is five. Immigration has not been willing to give us more than that and so we can only have five people working on that project. That means that to put those six months spread out over those five people, we're looking at closing down our office for about a month just to do the data entry if we have to do it manually. So we are concerned about that.

In addition, as Mr. Fine indicated, we're concerned about the level of exchange and information as we mount this system into a national level. We are working with the help desks and I can -- let me tell you a couple of stories which may be illustrative. When we first started the SEVIS part of this project which for the pilot schools was in January/February of this past year, the I-20, which is the document lower right over here that we were attempting to create, specifies all of the information about the student: name, date and place of birth, field of study and so on that tells the consular officer and the immigration officer what that student will be doing in the U.S.

The very first version of SEVIS, which was a version 1, could not print Ph.D. on that form. Well, we in the pilot schools were accustomed to working with the sort of shake down process but for the first couple of months we could not issue this document to many of the students coming to Duke because they were graduate students coming into Ph.D. programs. We had no way to represent that on the form. That has certainly been changed as we've moved into the national system but that is an example of the kinds of things we will find as we go through the next year of attempting to move information from those 1,000,000 records into this database.

And in terms of how the database functions it really is built to immigration's credit, they built it to do a lot of self checking and editing so that the system prevents errors that might be made in terms of whether someone is eligible for a particular process or benefit. However, in doing that they created a system that's very difficult to use at times and sometimes we cannot put accurate information into the system. The computer expects precision and the consular officers, the immigration officers, the student schools officers are expected to use their judgment and their discretion and to place an accurate set of data onto these forms.

An example of that that we have discovered recently at Duke is that we admitted a student whom we later discovered had given us fraudulent documents. We had already issued a SEVIS I-20 to that student. We made an effort to then cancel that I-20 on the assumption that we did not want that person to come into the country as we had revoked his admission. The current SEVIS system will not permit us to cancel that I-20. When we called the help desk the response was, well, you need to wait until 30 days after they're supposed to report for school and then report them as having failed to attend. This means that for three or four months we had a document that we knew was for a student that should not be in the country and we had no way to terminate that document.

Again, Immigration is working on those kinds of problems and we in the pilot schools and in the SEVIS test schools are bringing this to their attention and this has been a fairly cooperative activity but it does illustrate that there is much work to be done. I believe that the schools need at least a year to move this process from January 2003 to January 2004 in order to work through all of the various kinds of representations we need to make into the software and to do that accurately. Because if we push to put the data in, regardless of whether the data is accurate, I think that does a disservice to all of us.

Thank you.

REP. GEKAS: Mr. Hartle.

Well, before that let the record indicate that the lady from California, a member of the committee, Ms. Lofgren is in attendance. Proceed.

MR. TERRY W. HARTLE: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here. I testify this morning not simply on behalf of the American Council on Education but on behalf of the 75 other organizations that are listed at the back of my testimony. Taken together, these institutions and organizations represent virtually every institution of post secondary education and every exchange visitor program in the country, all of whom will be affected by SEVIS.

We think SEVIS is vitally important. We think SEVIS is the single most important thing that the federal government can do to improve the ability to attract international students and exchange visitors. But the benefit to SEVIS will extend far beyond tracking students and exchange visitors. For example, the Social Security Administration is already making plans to use SEVIS to verify information that is submitted to it by people whose visas allow them to work in the United States. So we support SEVIS, we would like to see it implemented as soon as possible.

We would agree with what has been said before, that we think the INS has done a pretty good job implementing SEVIS since Congress mandated last December that it be in place by this coming January. They've made progress more rapidly than we thought possible a year ago. They have consulted us, they have attended professional meetings where they could talk to some of the folks on campus who will do this and sometimes they've even taken our advice about how to simplify the system.

All colleges and universities and exchange visitor programs know that SEVIS is coming. They understand the seriousness of implementing it promptly and properly. We have communicated developments to them and we know that they are the central users. They're the people who have to make the system work on campus.

Many schools and exchange visitor programs are hiring staff. They're working overtime and they're upgrading IT systems to prepare for SEVIS implementation. But while we think INS has done a good job and we're ready and willing and indeed we are anxious to do our part, we're deeply worried about how much remains to be done in a rapidly shrinking period of time before schools must be fully compliant.

Let me mention to you some of the specific things that are not yet clear to us with respect to SEVIS.

The regulations governing SEVIS and international students, these are the F and M visas, have not been published in final form and are not expected to be published in final form until some time later this fall.

The regulations governing SEVIS and exchange visitors, J visas, 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 think it unlikely that we will have final regulations until after we are expected to be in compliance. The regulations detailing what schools must do to become re-certified to issue I-20s have also not been published, reportedly because of concerns over whether site visits are necessary. Traditional colleges, universities will not be substantially affected by this, many other educational institutions will be. INS has not determined yet how many campus officials, called designated school officials, will be permitted to process or enter data into SEVIS. As Catheryn Cotten has indicated, this is a very serious concern.

Batch processing, a key element of schools or exchange programs with more than 200 students or visitors will not be ready for full operational testing until some time later this fall. The step they've announced today while welcome is a preliminary step.

Schools have hundreds of technical questions and have had very uneven success getting help from the INS help desk. To give the committee an idea what these questions are like, I will submit a series of questions of the sort that people like Catheryn are calling the help desk with.

The amount -- the fee that students must pay to be registered in the SEVIS system and the procedures for collecting the fee remain unsettled. INS has no meaningful plans for training campus officials and has ignored our repeated suggestions that we hold regional briefing sessions for campus officials that we would organize and pay for. We believe that giving local officials who come from both the IT and the international education area the chance to ask questions directly to INS would help inform campus and exchange visitor programs and smooth implementation.

As I indicated, we believe SEVIS is vitally important. We have a strong commitment to implementing SEVIS as soon as possible. But to actually implement it, we have to have all the tools and regulatory guidance that we need and we must have them in a timely manner. Right now, we find ourselves in the position of a home owner who wants to install a new furnace but who lacks an instruction manual, needs tools that are not yet available and doesn't even have all the parts that the manufacturer promised to provide. This is not a prescription for smooth implementation on campus.

The INS mentioned to the subcommittee this morning that the toughest part is behind us. I would respectfully disagree. For college and universities visitor programs, the toughest part is just ahead of us. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here.

REP. GEKAS: Thank you very much. The chair will grant itself five minutes for a round of questioning. I get the distinct impression from the witnesses that we will not be prepared for full implementation of SEVIS by the mandated deadline of January 2003.

Mr. Fine, let me ask you, the doubts that you have asserted here, have you transmitted those to the commissioner?

MR. FINE: Yes, we have. We received a response from the INS to our May 2000 report and last week we responded to them with our continuing concerns. We noted the concerns in our report and we noted the concerns in our response to their prior report as well.

REP. GEKAS: Ms. Sposato, we noticed that Mr. Hartle was very pessimistic about being able to even receive the final publication of regulations to move on to the next step. What do you have to say about that?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, Mr. Chairman, the regulation process is a long one. INS did issue the F and M regs which are the main implementing regs in May. We received many comments. We have taken many of those comments to heart and we are prepared, as we speak, to begin moving forward our final reg in the clearance process, which is the reason that Mr. Hartle predicts -- and I think he's probably right -- that later this fall, the final reg will be issued.

REP. GEKAS: Go ahead.

MS. SPOSATO: The proposed reg is certainly a very good clean road map for what the INS plans to do. There will be some changes between proposed and final but that's generally not a dramatic switch in policy or position. So while it is true that the final reg is not published and nobody would see it published more promptly than me, it is also true that the road map is out there in the proposed reg. The J regs are a matter between the Department of State and the Office of Management and Budget and again, no one would like to see that published more promptly than I would.

REP. GEKAS: Mr. Hartle, does the proposed reg give you enough information to be able to tell this committee that, if the final publication mimics or matches the proposed regulation, that you would be ready to comply by 2003?

MR. HARTLE: No, sir, I'm afraid not. And it's very uncomfortable for any organization or business to depend on preliminary regulations to plan for implementing new government policies. We like to know exactly what we're required to do, not sort of what we have to do.

REP. GEKAS: You're bearing the brunt of all this, Ms. Sposato. Duke University, which is a pilot program, seems to indicate that it will not be fully ready by 2003.

MS. SPOSATO: Let me respond to one part of that and I appreciate that you recognize that we are getting the brunt of it, although I appreciate that my colleagues were fair about recognizing the progress we have made. Our proposed reg said that schools would have to be enrolled in SEVIS and issue all new I-20, these forms here, for new students starting on January 1st -- on January 30th, 2003. Duke is expressing a concern about what happens to all the continuing students, not the new students, but the continuing students. What the proposed reg said is that continuing students did not have to be entered on January 30th but that the school could take the time between that and their next full academic term to enter those other students.

Now, that would not be as long as Ms. Cotten is requesting. She is requesting a full year and how long that period is would depend on how long the schools' academic terms were. It could be as long as until the following September. That is one aspect of the rule that we will look at. But there is a balance to be struck here because Congress wanted and people concerned about national security want the system not only up but they want it used and used as fully as possible, as soon as possible.

So what INS has tried to do is strike a balance between meeting the desire to have this system up, running, functioning and used as promptly as possible and giving the schools a reasonable amount of time to enter their data. Besides wanting to be fair and reasonable to them, we want them to enter the data properly and if they're sponged too much, they'll just throw in messy data and we'll start the system with a mess on our hands. So there is a balance to be struck here and we've tried to strike it. It won't make everyone perfectly happy.

REP. GEKAS: If the system has not been fully implemented by the deadline of January 2003, are you asserting that it being used or its being implemented or in the process of being implemented will be adequate for our purposes, that is, that the tracking system will be more than adequate?

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

REP. GEKAS: I'm asking you this. You're saying now you're backtracking a little bit and giving us reasons to believe that it will not be fully implemented by January 2003. What I'm asking is, if it's only 70 percent active or 65 percent fully implemented, will be that valuable enough to continue pressing for full implementation with a shorter distance of time after January as possible?

MS. SPOSATO: I think that fully implemented is a definitional issue. When INS says that it will be fully implemented, we mean that the systems will be up, running and available to all schools and we have that by January 1st. By January 30th, we will require all schools to use SEVIS for their new students and some time before the start of their next semester, schools will be required to use SEVIS for all their students.

So the implementation of SEVIS is phased, but we will have it up and available on January 1st.

And the inspector general is using a third definition of fully implemented to include the full panoply of training and compliance monitoring that we plan to do. And all of that, the full amount of training that we plan, will not be completed by January 1 because we intend to do some of that over the spring.

REP. GEKAS: The time that the chair has allowed to the chair has expired.

We now recognize the presence of the ranking member of the minority, Ms. Jackson Lee of Texas and we will accord her the privilege of entering a statement into the record or offering an opening statement and then we'll turn to others for asking questions and get back initially for questions. Is that fair?

MS. JACKSON LEE (D-TX): That would be fair because I'd be happy to yield to Congressman Lofgren. I'll just make some brief comments and will add my comments when I ask questions as well.

First, Mr. Chairman, to say that this is an important hearing and of course, we are facing new and different times as I have queried the academic institutions around the nation, all of them recognize the high calling of cultural exchange and educational exchange and the importance of the presence of foreign students who truly come here to learn. At the same time, they recognize that most egregious actions took place before September 11th, particularly, I might say, with institutions that were not of the quality of Duke University and other institutions of higher learning. And so we must be cognizant that our academic institutions, I think, have been very diligent.

I am not attempting to be condescending but I do believe there is a distinction between those schools purely for-profit. Anyone who would accept $25,000 in cash to train someone to be an airplane pilot, who didn't land, they have a lot more problems than tracking the student who was there. There is judgment, conspicuousness of detriment to the nation and I think all of these vocational schools have learned a lesson, and others.

So I hope as we listen to the testimony and I apologize for my delay, I was at a meeting on Iraq. As you well know, we have bifurcated responsibilities here. But Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this hearing. I will be listening attentively to the questions and will look forward to the opportunity for my questions. I yield back to the chairman. I ask unanimous consent to submit my opening statement into the record.

REP. GEKAS: Without objection.

The gentleman from Arizona is recognized for five minutes for questioning.

REP. FLAKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the testimony.

The certification process, it seems that that is cumbersome, a big challenge with the resources that you have. Why wouldn't it be proper simply to rely on certification elsewhere, some other academic, North Central whatever, certification that is already out there? Is this being done to some extent, or is it -- why is it necessary to go for a site visit?

MS. SPOSATO: It is being done to some extent. The schools that are enrolled in SEVIS today, at this moment have been what we call preliminary enrolled and that has been on the basis of a prior certification by an organization accredited by the Department of Education. We do believe it's important to make a site visit to every school but we're trying to stage things. We're allowing the accredited schools in first. We will site visit everybody else and then we plan to go back and site visit the accredited schools.

The reason we want to make these site visits are -- there is a couple of reasons. One is to ensure that the school is bona fide but that's not really truly something you need to do with an accredited school. You have that information elsewhere. But we also want the site visit to be used as a way of assuring us and training the school. We want to be assured that the school, and not all the schools are Duke University as we all know. We want to ensure that the school has the proper records, has the wherewithal to be entering the data into the system. Because this is a system that relies very heavily on the school entering the primary data about the individual. And we want to visit the school. We want to check their record keeping, their past record keeping if they've been enrolled in our system before, and most of them have been.

We also want to use that visit as an opportunity to answer questions and work with the designated school official to ensure that they have what they need to have to do the job right. So we do believe it's important to visit every school but we do plan to leap frog it with higher risk schools, or schools we know less about, doing those site visits first.

REP. FLAKE: Mr. Fine, you mentioned under the previous system your check of 200 schools turned up some 86 or so that weren't at their correct address or were fraudulent in some way. When these are discovered, that these are not bona fide schools, they aren't accredited in any way, are these being reported to other agencies of government, the Department of Justice, for criminal investigation?

MR. FINE: No, I don't believe they have been. And the reason they are being discovered now is because we went out and looked at them. I don't think the INS has done a re-certification program prior to this, since 1983. So it was not discovered and there were so many schools on their list -- on their database, it just simply didn't exist or had moved or had closed down and should not have still be on the list to approve foreign students attending.

I don't believe that there has been a significant effort to uncover fraud and to refer those fraudulent schools for further investigation. There has been some effort, I can't deny that, but it clearly has not been a priority up to now.

REP. FLAKE: Are you comfortable that under the new system that we're going to have a better record then. That this -- I mean out of 200 schools, 86 having one problem, 12 having another and 11 having another problem. Are we going in the right direction.

MR. FINE: I think we're going in the right direction if the INS does, as Ms. Sposato stated, site visits of all the schools and prioritizing the higher risk schools first and then the lower risk schools. But I also agree that there does need to be these site visits to determine the bona fides, do they exist? But also their compliance with the regulations.

REP. FLAKE: Ms. Cotten mentioned that it takes three or four months to cancel students out. That would seem to be completely unacceptable. Has that been rectified?

MS. COTTEN: We have a release of the software. One of the reasons we've been implementing this software early and working with select schools early, was to get out these kinds of bugs before major implementation occurs and this particular bug is scheduled for correction in the release that will be released on October 1st.

REP. FLAKE: Okay. You mentioned you have a call center. That's one method to make sure that schools are brought up to date, people can get information. How many calls do you get at a call center on a daily basis?

MS. COTTEN: I didn't bring that number with me. I'd be glad to follow it up. The call center is staffed a lot more heavily today than it needs to be because we're anticipating a big influx of schools over the fall period. So whatever it is today, and I will send that information to you, it will be much larger over the next six months.

REP. FLAKE: Thank the chair.

REP. GEKAS: The chair recognizes the lady from California for a round of questioning, five minutes.

REP. LOFGREN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think this is an important hearing and I think it's worth noting that there is no one who is suggesting that we shouldn't proceed with this system. The question is, are we ready for prime time yet or not and what steps do we need to take to make this work and actually produce a level of information, I would say also safety, for the nation.

And I do have some concerns that we are not quite ready yet.

One of the issues, and I, like my colleagues have been talking to schools and universities to try and understand how this is working when the rubber meets the road out in schools, is that we haven't had a plan for testing the batch process yet, it's my understanding. And there is a great concern -- for example, Stanford University has really 5,000 foreign students they are going to have to batch process. They're working like crazy to get ready but there's been no testing of this system. Are we going to have testing yet?

MS. SPOSATO: Yes, testing of the batch will begin on Monday.

REP. LOFGREN: Monday.

MS. SPOSATO: And I have brought handouts for the schools and if people look at our web site, either today or tomorrow, the web site will have this information as well. But the testing site will be available as of Monday.

REP. LOFGREN: Well, I hope that that's being communicated, because I got an e-mail from the guy in charge of it at Stanford, on Sunday, and he was unaware of that. So hopefully we can let the universities know this.

I have a question also relative to the so-called 'dirty seven' countries. And let me preface this because I think there are differences between what I'll call the fly-by-night- U, that might be of terrible concern to the country. The flight schools that are accepting cash to teach people to fly, but not land, planes versus MIT, Harvard, Stanford, where the brightest students from all over the world are trying to go to study engineering or medicine or whatever.

Relating to the seven countries of concern, we have at all of these, the finest institutions in the nation, the best minds from these countries are trying to go to the MIT or to the Harvard or to the Stanford and the way we are dealing with their visas, really I think, in the end will preclude them from doing so. For example -- and I recently met with some engineering graduate students, the people pursuing their Ph.D. in electrical engineering. These are A-students who are from the -- I mean the smartest people in their country and they are being sought by all the universities in the world, by British universities, by -- and they will not go home. I mean when they're finished with their Ph.D., they will also be sought by companies in Europe and all over. I mean there's nothing from them to do in the primitive country that they're from.

If you cannot go to a conference, if you can't go home to see an ailing parent -- if it takes six months to re-enter, how do you study and be a graduate student in engineering at one of the finest institutions? And so the question I have, are we doing anything to help these students comply? One of the suggestions for example, made to me, was why don't we investigate -- one student said investigate me every day You know, put a tail on me, tap my phone. I've got nothing to hide. But if you could pre-clear me so that I don't have to wait for six months to come back in, that would be very helpful. Have we thought about doing something like that?

MS. SPOSATO: Congresswoman, the visa process is a State Department --

REP. LOFGREN: I realize that.

MS. SPOSATO: -- process, and so I'm not sure whether your question goes to the State Department process, which I really can't speak to that well, or to SEVIS. SEVIS will only expedite things, it will make things easier, and SEVIS is not a system that is designed to focus on handling people differently by nation of birth.

REP. LOFGREN: Let me ask you a technical question on SEVIS. One of the questions raised to me by a university person is, if you have -- for example, you've got students who have a major and two or even three minors, there's no way apparently to enter two minors. Or you might have at some of the larger and more prestigious universities, a student might take 18 or 19 units in the fall quarter and maybe 17 in the winter quarter, but 10 in the spring quarter because they're going to do some practical volunteer work for which they do not get credit.

It's my understanding they would therefore be not a student in the spring quarter even though Harvard or Stanford or Yale might consider them a full-time student. Have we done anything to deal with that? Is there any flexibility for the finest institutions to run their own programs?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, I believe that the law requires that students be full time. And the system is designed to allow for some diminution of credits for some reasons and schools can enter that. But if a student -- someone comes here as a student and then does not continue as a full-time student, their status does --

REP. LOFGREN: Yeah, but that's not the question I asked. I mean, you have a full time student who maybe over the course of a year has 50 or 60 units even, which is more than full time, but in one quarter might be doing some independent reading for which they're not getting credit but the university is satisfied with their progress, do we have any -- is there a way to say, okay, this is not fly-by-night U, this is Harvard or Stanford or MIT, and they know what they're doing?

MS. SPOSATO: The INS has not distinguished among types of schools in that way. We do distinguish between technical schools and academic schools where the rules are slightly different. It's not a problem that has really been brought up to me before. It does present some issues because if you're here to be a full-time student and you sort of double up in the first semester and then don't attend at all in the second semester, it does leave behind the question of whether you're a student.

REP. LOFGREN: But that's not the question I'm asking, however.

MS. SPOSATO: Okay, then I'm not following then, I'm sorry.

REP. LOFGREN: Obviously not.

REP. GEKAS: The time of the lady has expired. We will now turn to the lady from Pennsylvania for a round of questioning of five minutes.

REP. MELISSA HART (R-PA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a question for Ms. Sposato as well. In May of 2002 the chairman of the Judiciary -- in a letter to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department stated that, quote, "The INS anticipates that the SEVIS will deter fraud in the foreign student program through the use of encrypted barcodes that will be embedded in the system in the new eligibility documents that they will generate. I have a couple of questions about the barcode. First, how is it used to deter fraud, and I'm concerned about the use of the barcode and the types of readers they'll need to verify the authenticity of the barcodes on the I-20 forms presented by foreign visitors?

And also, shouldn't INS inspectors have barcode readers at ports to check the I-20 documents? If they already do, great. But do the schools also have those as they admit foreign students. Could you basically for me discuss the use of the barcodes.

MS. SPOSATO: Okay. Let me see if I can walk through the process so you can see where the barcode comes into it.

REP. HART: Okay.

MS. SPOSATO: Student applies to a school and the school enters the information in those first three charts, the blue charts, it's the information about this student. As a result of that, the school may print for the student the I-20 with the barcode, which is the black and white thing on the bottom which contains the information that's been entered in the system on the blue sheets. So the I-20 is a document really that the school creates, not one that the school would really use.

SEVIS was developed as a system to -- I like to look at it sort of like electronic ticketing. It's a paperless system and it should work on its own without the paper. When you go to an airport you may have a paper itinerary but what really matters is what's in the airline's system that says that you've got a ticket and you paid for it and whatever the airline system says. The fact that you have an itinerary in your hand that you printed is really not the significant source of the data. The source of the data is the system itself and that's the say SEVIS is designed.

Now, there may be situations where it's certainly helpful and convenient and comfortable for a student to be able to carry that I-20 and it certainly can help a consular officer find the data in the system about that particular student, because it's all printed out on that form. But it is what's in the system that counts, not the paper I-20. Now, on the reading of the barcode, the barcode makes that piece of paper more secure, but remember I told you the security of that paper is not really a key here.

But the way the barcode makes the paper more secure is that the barcode has encrypted into it information about the student, information that come from that I-20 form. So it makes it difficult to take that form, change the name or change the age on it, because if somebody were to read the barcode they would see the correct information or they encoded information. So you couldn't -- be hard to have a paper I-20 that was false that had a barcode that could be read. Are you following so far?

REP. HART: Halfway. I don't understand how you've gotten from an I-20 which will not have a barcode to --

MS. SPOSATO: No, the I-20 will print with a barcode.

REP. HART: You said that the school is producing the barcode.

MS. SPOSATO: Yes, the school is producing the I-20 from our SEVIS system. The school will enter the information in our SEVIS system, those blue sheets, and then they will push, if they choose to, a print option that will print an I-20 for them. When it is printed it will have that barcode on it, which will include encrypted -- well, bar coded information from the form.

REP. HART: So they won't get a barcode.

MS. SPOSATO: Everyone will get --

REP. HART: At the time they enter the country they don't get a barcode. They don't get a barcode until they're --

MS. SPOSATO: No. A student applies -- let's say a student applies to three schools, Mount Holyoke, Columbia and Harvard. They're not going to go to all three schools but they apply because they don't know where they'll get in, et cetera. When they decide where they'll go to school, and we'll say they're choosing to go to Columbia, they will go to a consulate and ask for a visa. When they go to the consulate to ask for the visa they will have three I-20 forms, one from Mount Holyoke, one from Columbia and one from Harvard. When they get to the consulate they will declare which school they're going to.

The consular officer will look in the system to see is this really a student who's received an I-20 from Columbia. If they have, they will -- and if other things are correct, they will issue a visa to that student to go to Columbia. They will enter in the system that Mount Holyoke and Harvard are no longer valid I-20s. Part of the reason that we have to emphasize go to the system, don't go to the paper.

REP. HART: Okay.

MS. SPOSATO: Okay. Now, staff has raised with us wouldn't it be good to have some barcode readers in some places so that if your system is down you could read right off the I-20 or just to help get into the system. And I've agreed that we will look at that and do some cost benefit analysis and see whether and where having barcode readers would make sense.

REP. HART: Thank you.

MS. SPOSATO: You're welcome.

REP. GEKAS: The chair now yields to the lady from Texas for a period of questioning of five minutes.

REP SHEILA JACKSON-LEE (D-TX): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me apologize for the rough voice that I have, suffering from one of these fall colds that cause my voice to be a little difficult, but the spirit is here.

Let me first, Mr. Chairman, acknowledge the very fine work of Commissioner Ziglar, who I'm not sure whether we will not have another hearing before the end of this immediate session to note that many of these issues preceded him but, under his leadership, I have seen an enormous amount of diligence and cooperation with this committee and the Senate and I want to publicly appreciate his fine work and hope that we can see, under his tenure, the finalization of this important concept that we're discussing here today.

I might have thought better about the terminology, as I read the language. I might have preferred to use the term 'monitoring' as opposed to 'tracking' because I do want to go back to my earlier point and clearly emphasize that I believe that most foreign students that come here in most academic institutions, Mr. Chairman, are in fact diligent. And at the same time, I think it is important to remind us why we are here because of the Hani Hanjour, one of the September 11th terrorists, but more particularly, again with due respect to the free standing institution, but this individual received a visa to allegedly go and learn English not at a certified -- let me restrain myself -- but not at an academic institution that I would call such and then wandered off not to learn English in Oakland, California but then instead wound up in Arizona.

I mean this is the crux of the issues, I think, that we are dealing with and I hope that we can reinforce that point that we are not talking about the population of individuals who've come here for opportunity. My statement again: immigration does not equate to terrorism. So I would have hoped and I want to note the provisions that were added in the Enhanced Border Security and Entry Reform Act that we will now be doing, as I understand, Ms. Sposato, and that is the documentation of acceptance of students by approval schools or designated exchange program, transmittal of documentation to the DoS.

This is what I understand is going to be part of our monitoring, if I can use that term. Issuance of non-immigrant visa to students or exchange visitor, we know about that. Admission of students or exchange visitor to the United States, notice to school or exchange program that non-immigrant has been admitted to the U.S., then registration or enrolment of non-immigrant in school or exchange program, any other relevant act by the non-immigrant, including changing schools or program. I assume we'll be monitoring that. I did not see in it, it might have been our own, if you will, faux pas and that is a question of whether that student pays by cash.

And so I have a series of questions and you might ask me or -- excuse me, respond as to whether or not there will be any monitoring of the financial way in which payment is made. If not, Mr. Chairman, I would almost say that whether that could be done by a regulation. I think that is a vital question that should be raised and I'm not sure if we had it in our legislation or we did not have it in our legislation. I think it says a lot and I would like to offer -- to propose that or to amend the present legislation that we had to get that information on the table.

But my questions are this, realizing the diligence of the INS, I do have several questions. You mentioned in your testimony that SEVIS will track the student, once he has physically reported and enrolled and if he fails to enroll, his record will be out of status. How will SEVIS system monitor -- I'm using a different term -- if he or she enrolls and then drops out? How will the INS find this person? How will you monitor this person? What if he or she enrolls and goes to another state, commits a crime while still enrolled? How can we really monitor the person? Is the computer system, the SEVIS system, the Internet system sort of strictly numerical or are we going to be in the business of actually -- or have the ability to be actually monitoring?

I have another question, if you can be gracious.

We are long but if you can be brief on those answers, I will greatly appreciate it.

MS. SPOSATO: Okay, I'll try. On paying by cash, I think you're asking about paying tuition by cash.

REP. JACKSON LEE: Yes, I am.

MS. SPOSATO: You know, that's not part of the system right now and it's not something I've given any thought to but it might be something we should look at. It won't be something that I can promise would be there on January 1 but I've got a note and we'll think about that and look at it --

REP. JACKSON LEE: Maybe the chairman will join me on a letter and then we can work with you to see that that may be one of the inquiries.

MS. SPOSATO: Okay. Some of these other things, SEVIS will help us monitor and some of them, it won't. Dropping out, if a student shows up and then drops out, it is the responsibility of the school to notify us through SEVIS that that has happened to the extent the school is aware of it. How will we find the student? We should have a current address. Part of what SEVIS does for us, it gives us an address on that I-20 and the student has an obligation to notify the school, if he changes address and the school has an obligation to enter that into SEVIS. So we should have more up-to-date addresses. It won't be perfect but we will have better information than we've had in the past. Crimes committed in another state?

REP. JACKSON LEE: While still enrolled.

MS. SPOSATO: While still enrolled. SEVIS does not track the criminal history of students. However, law enforcement -- and we do have to work on some of the memoranda of understanding, et cetera -- will have access -- federal law enforcement will have access to SEVIS so that to the extent that federal law enforcement chooses to look at student records to check people out or have us check people out, they will be able to do that. But SEVIS is not so active that it's constantly reaching out to states to find out if anything's happened and --

REP. JACKSON LEE: Mr. Chairman, if I can get an additional two minutes, I won't ask for any additional time --

REP. GEKAS: Without objection. Proceed.

REP. JACKSON LEE: Let me just pose a final question to you and then to the inspector general, thank you for your work as well.

Quickly, it has come to my attention that there are several small minority businesses who are seeking contracts with the INS for exit, entry data as well as for student tracking. We also know that we have some issues with some of the companies that we had before. Has there been any serious attention given to the utilization of small and minority businesses? If not, why not? If so, how have you been able to do this? Will there be a fee for these contracts, when and what will the process be and how will we reach out into the community for smaller minority businesses?

Let me pose my second question to Mr. Fine and then I can listen to your answers. I heard the number of 70 percent possible -- reaching 70 percent success maybe by January 30th. What security threat does that pose if we reach the 70 percent and what should we do and was there anything positive that came out of the 21 schools that were supposedly in a test process? That's to you on the whole implementation aspect. And I yield now to Ms. Sposato on the minority and small businesses and the contracts and how are you going to seek businesses to do this work, which I think is going to be very important. There's a lot of good expertise out there that needs to be utilized.

MS. SPOSATO: I'm glad you ask the question. In one of my earlier lives, I was the procurement executive for the Department of Justice and I know the importance of the Small and Minority Business Program to the department and I know how valuable the service of those firms can be.

The SEVIS contract, the main one for the software was and is being performed by EDS, which is not a small minority business. There will be a small amount of additional contracting -- well, the contract for performing the site visits, frankly, we did over the GSA schedules. I don't know whether any of the vendors there that won the award -- we awarded to three vendors -- I don't know if any of them were small or minority businesses. I can check.

There will be one third award probably for the training of DSO officers and I can promise that we will look at small and minority businesses to do that for us. The entry exit, I'm just not in a position to really comment upon what is planned in that. There's a lot of procurement to be done there. But I will carry back to the department your concern and your interest in ensuring that small and minority businesses are considered for that work.

REP. JACKSON LEE: Thank you.

Mr. Fine?

MR. FINE: We haven't heard from the INS what percentage of site visits they think they'll complete by January 30th. I think it's hard to say because they don't know how many schools will ask to be certified. The more that are visited, the more important it is. And we have concerns that they simply won't reach 100 percent goal. One of the things we asked was, what was the alternative plan? What's going to happen on January 30th if there hasn't been a site visit, if there is a concern of a school that may not, should not be issuing I- 20s and that's a concern that we have. So I think the INS ought to consider what will be the alternative come January 30th if they haven't been able to complete all the site visits. I think that's an important question.

REP. JACKSON LEE: Thank you.

REP. GEKAS: We'll employ a second round of questioning. I'd like to follow up with what Mr. Fine was discussing here.

It's our understanding that if there be no site visit then there is no access to SEVIS contemplated. Is that the way we start out?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, not 100 per cent. As I explained, we have a sort of a leap frog approach to this. If you are an accredited school you may be allowed access to SEVIS based on a paper review of the records. We will go back and do a site visit for you after January but we'll give you the preliminary enrolment.

REP GEKAS: You grade them? You're going to be grading them? Those that are grade A, you're going to not require an onsite visit immediately? Let's go to B and C?

MS. SPOSATO: Well, I wouldn't call it grading in the sense of we're taking advantage of existing information about those schools. If they are accredited we have very little concern that they are a bona fide functioning institution today. They may not be running their student program the way we would like and we will get to them but we at least know that we've got a bona fide institution.

We have hired three nationwide contractors. And I'd like to go in to a little about how we plan to do this and I think I can put to rest some of the inspector general's concerns. We've hired three contractors who have nationwide networks of investigators. If you've seen these background investigations that used to be done by OPM, there are now contractors who do that. In fact one of the contractors was a spin-off of OPM employees. We've hired three of those contractors and they are ready and able to begin site visits for the schools that will have the site visits. As Mr. Fine says, we don't know how many that will be but we hope that -- each one of them has said that they think they can do all the work. If we have 10,000 schools each one thinks they can do it. We haven't relied upon that.

REP. GEKAS: Just on that question.

Will they be prioritizing? Will you prioritize their onsite visits based on eliminating from the priorities, the established schools and going directly to those at higher risk or are they just going to go to Harvard and Penn State?

MS. SPOSATO: Our plan is to set priorities as we need to. Our proposed regulation which I understand was approved by OMB last night, so it will be out next week, indicates that if we do not have the time to visit every school, we will set priorities based on risk. The day after the regulation is published, let's say it's published next Friday, the following Monday, if we have applications from three flight schools and Harvard, we will act on all of them because we have the investigators ready and we have the ability to do it. As we approach January we will prioritize where we make the site visits first so that we will have -- we will visit all flight schools and all language schools before we put them into the SEVIS system. If we're fortunate and if everything goes perfectly, everybody will get their site visit in advance of January. If that can't happen, those lower risk schools will be allowed access to SEVIS based on a paper review of their situation and then we will do the site visit later. We will not allow anyone access to SEVIS that we are not comfortable with.

REP. GEKAS: Letting them have access to SEVIS without the benefit of the site visit, that will not be violative of a regulation?

MS. SPOSATO: No. The regulation has been carefully written to allow us the option of doing the site visit after -- allowing this preliminary enrolment for all but flight and language schools.

REP. GEKAS: I for one would like to have a list of what you might consider the at risk or the higher risk institutions on the question of prioritizing site visits.

MS. SPOSATO: We have not done that work yet other than -- in the regulation it says, flight and language schools will all have site visits. But I'd be glad to share that with you when we develop it.

REP. GEKAS: Yes, as soon as it's developed I'd like to redevelop it.

MS. SPOSATO: Okay.

REP. GEKAS: Oh, one other question. You're bearing the brunt of these questions and I feel sorry for you but I don't feel sorry for you.

MS. SPOSATO: As long as they're polite it's okay.

REP. GEKAS: You have indicated that you have sought or are seeking barcode readers. Is that correct?

MS. SPOSATO: We are considering barcode readers. As I explained, barcode reading is not key to this system. However, your staff has convinced me that there are situations where reading the barcode might be some icing on the cake. It might help us. And what we're going to look at is how expensive are those barcode readers and where would it make the most sense to place them. But the system really works by reading the system not by reading the document.

MR. REP. GEKAS: Well, if we have barcodes, are they useful if we don't have readers?

MS. SPOSATO: No. But if you're not reading the document at all -- the barcode is as I understand it, and I am relatively new to the INS, and the barcode is a vestige of some of the pilot systems where reading the document was the important part of the process. When SEVIS was developed, reading the document became unimportant. They left the barcode on the document because it was developed and we have the technology for it but reading the barcode is not the key here. It's just like reading -- your itinerary is not the key to whether the airline is going to let you on the plane. It's what's in their system about whether you have an E-ticket that matters. And in this case it's what's in our system about whether you have an I-20. Remember, as I explained, you may have three I-20s for three different schools and only one of them may be valid at a later date. So reading the documents can be misleading and we want to encourage people to go into the system and read from the system when they want the information.

REP. GEKAS: So the barcode becomes superfluous?

MS. SPOSATO: Somewhat superfluous and there maybe come a day when we don't even use the paper document.

REP. GEKAS: Does that satisfy the remaining members of the panel to know that the barcode is going out the window?

MS. COTTEN: Could I speak to that?

When we were developing this program with CIPRIS and with SEVIS, it was my understanding that the barcode is merely a way of opening the file. That is, the scanner would make the screen pop up and say, you know, Catheryn Cotton admitted to Duke. So that you could use the barcode for access or you could actually type in the number or name of the student to have that file pulled forward. I'm not sure what changes have been made in the SEVIS process but our understanding was that it was merely one way to open that record and see it and it was the most efficient way so you didn't have to type in numbers, you don't have to type a name. You just scan a code and the file opens.

MS. SPOSATO: It's interesting to hear that it appears that there will be a different way of opening the file than using the barcode.

MS. COTTON: No, you can type in the name or the number.

REP. GEKAS: It means you have to change your procedures, is that right, at Duke?

MS. COTTON: We would not change what we do because the barcode gets printed by the Immigration Service. When we hit the print button the laser printer in our office prints out a document that looks like this. So as far as we're concerned it can print out whatever Immigration wants to see. But it was our understanding, in terms of technology, that the barcode is a far more accurate technological method for accessing a file as opposed to typing in a name which might be misspelled or typing in the number that is assigned to the student which might be keyed in erroneously.

REP. GEKAS: The time of the chair has expired. We turn to the lady from California for a period of second round questioning.

MS. LOFGREN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have many, many questions and I'd like permission of the chair to submit them for later answers.

REP. GEKAS: Without objection the members of the committee will be given the opportunity to render written questions with the fullest cooperation of the individuals who are testifying here today, we trust. And that has been accomplished without objection.

MS. LOFGREN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mindful that we have a vote on and other members wishing to speak. I must say that listening to this testimony today has made me even more sure that the vote I cast to move the State Department visa issuance function into the Homeland Defense was the right approach because it seems to me that there is some disconnect even yet between the issuance of visas, the information that is being gathered at a consulate and the seamless transmission of that data to the INS and to the university system. And I think we're going to be paying a price for that unless the Senate accedes to the House in the moving of the consular functions.

And getting back to the barcode issue, I mean, it seems to me if we were to integrate these functions obviously you've got three I-120s in the example given, you've got Harvard, fly-by-night U and fly-by- night U2 and the student chooses Harvard, the consular official ought to cancel the I-120s and the only thing that would be in this system would be the I-120 from the -- that reflects the actual admission. And the barcode, I mean, every supermarket in America has a barcode reader. Presumably we will want to have that technology so that we would have accurate transmission both at the ports of entry with the INS inspectors and it could also be utilized by the universities, who are partners in tracking this information.

And getting back to my prior question about students who have the misfortune of having been born in one of the seven countries of specific interest under the law, I mean, obviously in most of these countries there's no embassy. And so there's no embassy to do background checks on these kids and so they're going to some other country that doesn't know anything about them when the real information needs to be gathered about them here. And for the most part, at least the students I've met, I mean, they don't want to go and live in some horrible places they left, they hope to live in Europe or in the U.S. ultimately and they're willing to have their backgrounds examined here because they want to be safe in America as well.

But there's no way to do it because that's the State Department and this is the INS and we don't have a joint approach on making us safe. So I don't have an additional question except, Mr. Chairman, to say I hope we can work hard together to make sure that the transfer of those visa issuance functions by the State Department does indeed get transferred over to Homeland Defense because this is just an obvious example of why this does not work. And I yield back.

REP. GEKAS: The chair thanks the lady. We turn to the lady from Pennsylvania for a quick round of second questions.

REP. HART: I simply have one question --

REP. GEKAS: Or a second round of quick questions.

REP. HART: -- and it will be quick. And this is basically regarding the SEVIS system again. It is my understanding that there had been a training program that the INS had where specialists would travel to the schools to teach the employees how to use the system. First of all, does that system continue? And if it has been discontinued, why and does that have anything to do with the slowing of the implementation of the system?

MS. SPOSATO: INS did have a portion of the EDF contracts that involved what I would call outreach. And the reason I call it outreach rather than training is that the system was not up. We weren't training people in how to use the system but it was to help bring schools along and help them understand what SEVIS would be like and what the whole process would be like. And when I mentioned in my short statement that we'd made over 100 visits to schools in the last year, that's largely through that contract.

In around July, when we began actually enrolling schools into the SEVIS system to begin using the system, we decided that it was -- that kind of outreach was not our best use of resources and we moved the resources into this help desk that we've also talked about here that is available for schools to help them actually get online and start using the system and deal with the kinds of issues that Catheryn raised. So we did change --

REP. HART: So that's kind of a -- that's a replacement then for the training?

MS. SPOSATO: Right. It's just a change of focus from one to the other. Now, we are continuing to do some outreach with our own staff but it won't be to the high degree that it was done earlier. But we think it's appropriate, as you move closer to implementation, that you are -- that you focus your training on now how do you actually use this system and how do you get on and why isn't' your password working and all of those kind of, you know one-on-one things rather than these large group sessions where you're just describing things generally.

REP. HART: How long has the help desk been up and running? Is that since July or --

MS. SPOSATO: Maybe August. Well, July. My folks are telling me July.

REP. HART: And is it being utilized?

MS. SPOSATO: Yes, it is. And in fact, I had a question earlier and now I have a note answering it. We have about 100 questions a day on the help desk right now. Now, as I explained, we'll get a lot more as we have more schools approved to use it you'll get more questions.

REP. HART: Okay. I yield back to the chairman.

REP. GEKAS: The lady from Texas is recognized for a second round.

REP. JACKSON-LEE: Mr. Chairman, let me just simply ask that this statement from the National Association of International Educators be submitted into the record with unanimous consent. I ask unanimous consent of that, please.

REP. GEKAS: Without objection.

REP. JACKSON-LEE: And my -- just going to have a closing comment because I think that there's so much on the table that we're going to have to probe this either individually or hear back from the commissioner on this. Let me make an official request that the INS presents to us the answer to the question of if we're not up and running, have not made all of our site visits by January 30th, what is your solution? I would also ask you to include in that your concerns or commentary about the visa program as it relates to DOS. I know that is not your issue but it plays into the implementation of the SEVIS program. So if you could provide us with that that is absolutely crucial.

And then I would conclude by saying that the indicative cash put a enormous pale over September 11th. That seemed to be the currency. Obviously a check and a credit card gives us even more information, so I believe the devil is in the details. And someone paying cash would be the reddest flag that we could ever have. However we get that included, we must do that, I believe, immediately, even though we sent a signal that we now know that cash sends off signals. But I thank you very much and I look forward to working with you.

REP. GEKAS: We thank the lady. We will allow Mr. Hartle to give a 60 second peroration of everything that has happened.

MR. HARTLE: I won't even take 60 seconds. One of the weaknesses that we see with SEVIS is training. Campuses have very little information. The information they get from the help desk is often ambiguous and conflicting. We've asked INS to work with us to set up some regional meetings where all sorts of people could come and just ask them questions about how to do things. Campuses have hundreds of operational questions and we need to get those answers if we're to have an even chance of implementing SEVIS by the date that everyone wants it implemented by.

REP. GEKAS: The chair suspects that intense note taking on the part of the INS people here to your remark will speed some action on that score. We are very grateful for what you have imparted to us today. I personally feel that we might need another hearing if only time would permit, and of course time governs all in these days. But what we have learned has been very beneficial, but beneficial only that it raises a lot of questions that have not yet been answered.

We may or we may not have another hearing. We will have more questions. We thank you for your attendance and your participation. The meeting is closed.

(Adjourn)

END

LOAD-DATE: October 1, 2002