Chron of Higher Ed Monday, October 15, 2001

Senators Say They Expect Foreign Students, Colleges to Help Pay for New Monitoring System

By SARA HEBEL

Washington

Two senators told college officials on Friday that they had every intention of requiring foreign students studying

in the United States to help pay for a database to track individuals with student visas. The lawmakers also said they would expect institutions both to collect the fees and to help finance the new system.

College officials had hoped to persuade lawmakers to allocate federal funds to pay for the project.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Sen. Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican, made those comments during a hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information. Senator Feinstein, the chairwoman of the subcommittee, called the meeting to discuss how technology and proposed reforms of the nation's immigration and visa system could help keep potential terrorists out of the United States or detect them once they are in the country.

Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, Senator Feinstein has voiced particular concern about the student-visa system, which she called one of the most under-regulated systems in the nation. Some reports have said that one of the suspected hijackers in last month's attacks entered the United States on a student visa but never showed up for classes at an English-as-a-second-language program in Oakland, Calif. About 500,000 of the 7.1 million foreigners who enter the United States each year come to the country on student visas, Ms. Feinstein said.

"I believe most foreign students legitimately come to the United States to study and, indeed, they provide a great contribution -- certainly financial contributions as well as others -- to our institutions," Senator Feinstein said Friday. "However, I do have a concern that in the last 10 years, more than 16,000 students came from such terrorist-supporting states as Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, and Syria."

During the hearing, senators on the subcommittee and David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, voiced support for trying to speed the progress of getting a foreign-student-tracking system up and running.

A 1996 federal immigration law requires the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to fully establish such a system by 2003; experimental forms of the student database now operate on some campuses. The tracking system is supposed to be financed by a one-time $95 fee paid by foreign students who want to attend American universities.

However, Mr. Ward and other college officials would prefer that the federal government, rather than students, pay to install the tracking system and keep it running.

On Friday, Mr. Ward praised Senator Feinstein for a letter she wrote to President Bush earlier this month. In it, the senator urged the president to set aside $32.3-million of federal emergency funds to help the INS get the electronic tracking system in place faster. On Friday, the American Council on Education sent its own letter to the president, asking that the president designate $36.8-million for the project.

James W. Ziglar, commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, testified at the hearing that the agency has been unable to develop the system for monitoring foreign students because it is required to pay for its creation with student fees that haven't yet been collected. If the agency received some federal start-up funds, officials would probably be able to get the database in place before the 2003 deadline, Mr. Ziglar testified.

However, Senator Feinstein was quick to point out to Mr. Ward that providing some federal funds to get the database on track would not relieve students or colleges from making significant financial contributions to build the tracking system and keep it running.

"I don't want you to believe that because I sent that letter that I don't believe there should be a fee system and that it should be collected by the schools," she said, "because I do believe that."

Senator Kyl, the top Republican on the subcommittee, strongly agreed. "Students and universities have to bear part of the expenses," he declared.

He said that it is the least institutions can do, since foreign students' tuition dollars help fill colleges' coffers. "I don't think it's too much of a sacrifice to help us enforce the laws we benefit from," he said.

Senator Kyl also made a point of telling Mr. Ward that he was not swayed by concerns that the college official had voiced during the hearing about how potential students would pay the fee. A proposal the INS is considering would require that foreign students pay their $95 fee for the database with a credit card over the Internet or in American dollars before they could obtain a visa to enter the country.

Mr. Ward said such a process "would seriously undermine the ability of most foreign students to enroll at American colleges." Many international students, he argued, do not have access to credit cards, U.S. dollars, or the Internet. But Senator Kyl argued that most students who would consider attending American colleges should be able to find a way to obtain U.S. dollars. If not, universities could perhaps work out a system in which the institution would pay the fee for the student and then have the individual reimburse the college upon arriving on campus.

Over all, Senator Feinstein praised colleges during the hearing for having committed over the past two weeks to help supply federal officials with student information they may need to fight terrorism. Mr. Ward also presented the senators with several proposals to improve the student-visa system, many of which colleges had already offered to Senator Feinstein in private meetings earlier this month. Among the proposals were requirements for colleges and universities to inform the INS within 30 days of the start of an academic term about the failure of any foreign student to appear for classes, and for the INS to notify colleges when a foreign student entered the country using forms endorsed by those institutions.

Meanwhile, Tony Doonan, vice president for automated fingerprint identification systems at NEC Technologies, which is based in California, advocated during the hearing that colleges use Web-based software and a fingerprint scanner to help track foreign students and let U.S. officials know when individuals with student visas arrive on campus.

Mr. Doonan said Congress could help beef up national security and catch potential terrorists who might try to steal identification documents by requiring individuals who enter the United States to carry visas or passports that contain computerized information unique to that person, such as fingerprints. When a student arrived at a campus, for instance, the institution could scan the person's fingerprint, check it against a national database to make sure it was the right person, and send the information along to federal officials, Mr. Doonan said.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001