INS Officials Tell Congress They Have Little Information
on Foreign Students
The Chronicle of
Higher Education
By DAN CURRY
Washington
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has no way
of estimating how many foreigners who entered the United States on student
visas might still be residing here illegally, an agency official said Wednesday
at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing.
Representatives of the INS and the State Department
testified before the subcommittees on Select Education and on
21st-Century Competitiveness on the need for greater
information-sharing between law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Both said they lacked the systems and resources to have
intercepted Hani Hanjour, one of the suspected terrorists in the
September 11 attacks, who used a student visa to enter the
United States but never showed up for classes at an
English-as-a-second-language program in Oakland, Calif.,
owned by Berlitz International.
Michael Becraft, acting deputy commissioner of the INS, said
that INS officials also would not readily know if a foreigner who arrived on a
student visa actually began taking classes, and would not know if a student
dropped out. Even if they had that information, he said, the agency would lack
the personnel to locate and apprehend the person.
"The INS recognizes that it is vulnerable to both
inaccurate data and fraud at various stages of the [visa] process," Mr.
Becraft said. "Although the INS currently maintains limited records on
foreign students and is able to access that information on demand, that
information is on old technology platforms that are insufficient for today's
need for rapid access."
Mary A. Ryan, the State Department's assistant secretary for
consular affairs, said that U.S. consulates in foreign countries run each visa
applicant's name through a database that will flag the name if it matches any
on a list of suspected terrorists or criminals provided by U.S. law-enforcement
and intelligence agencies. But the database is only as strong as the
information it contains, Ms. Ryan said. It flagged none of the 19 hijackers
involved in the September 11 attacks.
Mr. Becraft and Ms. Ryan both testified in favor of
accelerating the use of a computerized foreign-student-tracking system, known
as the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, which would monitor the
whereabouts and enrollment status of foreign students in the United States. The
system would fill many of the security gaps that now plague the INS's
paper-based system, Mr. Becraft said.
Lawmakers have made reforming the nation's visa system a
priority since the September 11 attacks. At the hearing
Wednesday, they were at times left speechless by how little
information the INS kept on foreign students. Rep. George Miller, the ranking
Democrat on the House education committee, sat dumbfounded for a few moments
after Mr. Becraft described how little is known about a foreign students'
activities once they enter the country. That information, Mr. Becraft said, is
buried in mountains of unprocessed paperwork.
"What the hell is going on there?" asked Mr.
Miller, of California. "The genius of terrorists is that they analyze
systems for weaknesses. There's no sense of due diligence here."
But other lawmakers defended the INS and the State
Department, pointing out that both were operating with limited resources.
Rep. Lynn N. Rivers, a Michigan Democrat, noted that
Congress had been trimming agency payrolls in recent years to streamline
government. But "we always want bigger government when we're afraid,"
she said.
Ms. Ryan said that financing the computerized
student-tracking system would be the quickest, most cost-efficient improvement that
Congress could authorize to respond to the security risks posed by foreign
students. The Bush administration has requested $11.7-million to finance the
first-year costs of the system. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat,
and college lobbying groups are calling for $36-million to finance the system.
Higher-education officials at the hearing reiterated their
position since the September 11 attacks that although they support increased
monitoring of foreign students at their institutions, they object to making
each student pay a $95 fee to support the tracking system. Such a cost would be
a barrier to those students' enrolling in American colleges, they said, arguing
that the tracking system should be completely federally financed.
"Because the program is addressing a national priority
-- reduction of the risk of terrorism -- we think that the annual operating funds
ought to be provided through an annual appropriation to the Immigration and
Naturalization Service rather than by imposing a fee on students, as the law
currently envisions," said David Ward, president of the American Council
on Education.
Of the 31.4 million visas issued in 1999, 570,000 -- or less
than 2 percent -- were student visas, Mr. Ward said.
He and Mr. Becraft traded accusations of blame for slowing
down the creation of the computerized tracking system. Mr. Ward said that INS
had never been sensitive to the concerns of education groups, so they had had to
turn to "Congress to get straightforward administrative matters
resolved." Mr. Becraft, in turn, cited education groups for stalling over
the issue of the fee.
Rep. Patsy T. Mink, a Hawaii Democrat, noted that because
they are tracked by their host institutions, foreign students already receive
more monitoring than people entering the country on other types of visas.
"Few other visitors in this country endure this kind of scrutiny,"
she said.