Friday, October 19, 2001

Database to monitor foreign students underway in Boston
By Sabine Eckle
The Daily Free Press

BOSTON (U-WIRE) — With little more than a mouse click, government officials, including the FBI, will soon be able to access personal information about international students attending school in the United States.

The Student Exchange Visitor Information System, a database developed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service that will centralize international student records from institutions of higher learning across the country, is being implemented this month at 12 schools in the Boston area, the Washington Post reported.

The program will be implemented at Boston University in about a year, when the software will be ready to handle the campus’ large population of international students, said Greg Leonard, director of the International Students and Scholars Office.

Expected to be nationwide by the end of 2003, Congress has provided initial funding for the program, which will be supported by a $95 registration fee collected from individuals applying for student visas.

The database contains the same information that international students are required to provide on INS Form I-20, including name and address, nationality, place of birth, degree program, date of commencement and academic status.

While Leonard said he acknowledged the U.S. government’s right to know what and where students are studying, he also highlighted some of the program’s disadvantages.

“It’s unfortunate, because it represents an impediment for international students. It raises the barriers for them to come to this country to study when what we should be doing is trying to lower them,” Leonard said.

“International students make an enormous contribution to U.S. universities and colleges,” he said.

According to Leonard, BU and other schools with large international student populations were deliberately excluded from the test group of schools because the technology cannot yet handle the volumes of information.

More than half a million foreign students enter the U.S. on student visas each year, according to government reports. Until 1998, BU had the largest number of international students in the country, a title since usurped by New York University.

About 4,443 international students enrolled at BU last fall, according to Leonard, but this year’s number is expected to be slightly lower.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 authorized the creation of the database and includes a provision that schools also include information on any disciplinary action taken against students who has been convicted of a crime.

The act was adopted after lawmakers learned that one of the men who drove a truck full of explosives under the World Trade Center in 1993 entered the U.S. on a student visa to study engineering at Wichita State University.

On the whole, BU international students did not seem to be worried about the additional surveillance and fee, which will most probably not be applied retroactively, Leonard said.

“If the government really feels that people entering the U.S. on student visas with the wrong intentions are a threat, then they should go about getting information about these people,” said Niclas Bahn, a College of Arts and Sciences senior from Austria.

“I just hope my information will be kept safe and not be misused,” he said.

A pilot version of the database containing 40,000 records was initiated in 1997 and already has been tested at 21 schools and colleges, Wired Magazine reported.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, an immigration subcommittee member, called for a six-month moratorium on the issuing of student visas following reports that at least one of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the country on a student visa. She later dropped the proposal.

However, investigators now believe all the Sept. 11 terrorists entered the U.S. on tourist and business visas. The moratorium was also rejected due to the harm that a sharp reduction in the number of visas could cause to U.S. schools and the economy.
People who enter the United States on student visas are not nearly as great a risk as those who enter on other visas and immigration statuses, BU spokesman Colin Riley said.

“The biggest risk, if visas are to be considered a risk,” said Riley, “are the millions of tourist visas that are issued by American consulates all over the world each year.”

The institutions currently implementing the database are Worcester State College, New England Conservatory, New England College of Optometry, Aurthur B. Little School of Management, Cambridge College, Center for Blood Research, Emmanuel College, Framingham State University, Hellenic College, Holy Cross Orthodox School of Theology, Lasell College and Middlesex Community College.