Thread: New college program brings Saudis to U.S.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national ... -9971r.htm

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com


New college program brings Saudis to U.S.
By Garance Burke
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 10, 2006

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Thousands of students from Saudi Arabia are enrolling on
college campuses across the United States this semester under a new
educational exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King
Abdullah.
The program will quintuple the number of Saudi students and scholars in
the United States by the academic year's end. And big, public universities
from Florida to Oregon are in a fierce competition for their tuition
dollars.
The kingdom's royal family -- which is paying full scholarships for
most of the 15,000 students -- says the program will help stem unrest at
home by schooling the country's brightest in the American tradition. The
State Department sees the exchange as a way to build ties with future Saudi
leaders and young scholars at a time of unsteady relations with the Muslim
world.
But some officials say efforts to fast-track educational diplomacy with
Saudi Arabia could use additional scrutiny. Clark Kent Ervin, a former
inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the
U.S. government has yet to ensure proper safeguards are in place to do
effective background checks on all applicants.
Administrators at Kansas State University, an agricultural school
surrounded by miles of prairie grass, say the scholarships are a bonanza
for public education.
"The Saudi scholarship program has definitely heightened our interest
in that part of the world," said Kenneth Holland, associate provost for
international programs. "Not only are the students fully funded, but
they're also paying out-of-state tuition."
Kansas State administrators say common misperceptions about the
oil-rich nation make it crucial to create a tolerant environment for Arab
and Muslim students, who have been singled out for scrutiny since the
September 11 attacks.
Before then, Saudi visa applicants were allowed to bypass the U.S.
Embassy in Riyadh by submitting their applications to preapproved travel
agencies, which forwarded them onto the consulate for approval or
rejection. Three of the 15 Saudi September 11 hijackers used that program,
dubbed "Visa Express," to enter the United States.
"Since then, everything has changed," Saudi Embassy spokesman Nail
Al-Jubeir said. "There are long lines to wait for a visa. Once they get in
to a university here, they are checked and rechecked."
In 2002, Congress mandated that the DHS create the "Visa Security
Officer" program in consular offices in Saudi Arabia.
That would bump up security by allowing counterterrorism officials to
check visa applications against lists of known or suspected terrorists, Mr.
Ervin said.
That same year, Congress also instituted the Student and Exchange
Visitor Information System, or SEVIS, which monitors all foreign students'
activities -- including where they live, whether they go to class and
whether they finish their studies.
All foreign students are tracked on that program, which Mr. Holland
said made him feel "very comfortable."
Kansas State boosted efforts to court Saudi officials in the past year,
flying administrators and department heads to the Saudi Embassy in
Washington. It's paid off: Last month about 150 Saudi students started
classes there, each funded to the tune of about $31,000.
Mr. Al-Jubeir said 90 percent of the Saudi students the State
Department has registered for the fall semester in the United States also
will get such scholarships.
"This is a critically important bilateral relationship," said Tom
Farrell, a deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State
Department. "It's an opportunity to increase understanding of Saudi Arabia
for the United States and of the United States for Saudi Arabia."
As Kansas State students enjoy a string of home football games this
month, they also are preparing for the campus' first celebration of
Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
"We really want to make this special. We're going to truck in halal
food from Kansas City," Mr. Holland said. "The Saudi government is trying
to place the students in a variety of institutions across the country, but
where you get the competitive advantage is how you treat the students when
they get here."
Marwan Al-Kadi, who was active in the Muslim student association while
he studied industrial engineering at Kansas State, said efforts to raise
awareness about religious diversity have helped the new influx of students
feel comfortable.
"Sometimes people ask me if I ride a camel to campus. They don't even
realize how many cities we have in Saudi Arabia," Mr. Al-Kadi said. "I want
to use the education to go back and work for my father's company."
Allan Goodman, president and chief executive officer of the Institute
of International Education in New York, said the new bilateral agreement is
a "tremendously positive" step toward person-to-person diplomacy.
"These 15,000 students will really jump-start education, and that will
be a great addition to the kingdom," Mr. Goodman said. "At its base, it's
about mutual understanding."


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http://www.refuseandresist.org/detentio ... hp?aid=805

Chicago Tribune: Glitches riddle database to track foreign students
Posted on Thu, Mar. 20, 2003
Glitches riddle database to track foreign students

By ROBERT BECKER Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - The computer system intended to track international students as
part of the nation's stepped-up security routinely loses sensitive
information about foreign students and faculty, according to university
officials throughout the country.

Gaffes in the $36 million Student and Exchange Visitor Information System -
or SEVIS - have also left schools unable to print documents that
international students and visiting scholars need to obtain visas, delaying
their entry into the country.

Remarkably, universities trying to print documents for their visiting
scholars through the SEVIS program operated by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security have had those papers appear on printers at other
campuses thousands of miles away.

And in an incident creating concern in academic circles around the country,
a student from Thailand attending Southeastern University in Washington was
arrested March 12 by federal agents after the SEVIS database incorrectly
listed her as having dropped out, university officials said.

"We are very concerned about this kind of precipitous action, especially
during the time that the database is getting the kinks out of it," said
Charlene Drew Jarvis, Southeastern president.

Federal officials could not be reached for comment about the incident.

Flaws in the federal government's ability to track the approximately
500,000 foreign students who come to the United States each year to attend
school surfaced after two terrorists involved in the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks received approval for student visas six months later.

As part of a congressionally mandated system to track international
students, SEVIS was rolled out in January, with schools required to use the
system exclusively by Feb. 15.

SEVIS, developed for the government by Electronic Data Systems Corp., for
the first time will link schools that admit foreign students with federal
agencies. It will provide an instantaneous exchange of information.

SEVIS is designed to replace a tracking system riddled with errors and
fraud. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service had conceded that it
had all but stopped monitoring more than 70,000 schools and institutions
empowered to admit foreign students.

Chris Bentley, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, which replaced INS and oversees SEVIS, acknowledged that the
computer network "is not a perfect system."

Bentley said the agency decided to roll out SEVIS during the relatively
quiet spring semester so glitches could be identified. He said officials
remained "fully confident" SEVIS would be ready for fall semester, when the
bulk of new international students need records processed.

But in recent weeks, problems have been multiplying with SEVIS, which
universities access through a government-controlled Web site.

On Monday, when Michigan State University tried to print SEVIS documents,
all had the word "SAMPLE" on them. At the University of Texas at Austin,
officials said they were unable to print any documents for two days last
week.

And officials at Georgetown University in Washington said Friday they have
temporarily quit using the system.

"When we go in and use the system, it's a guessing game as to whether any
of our data is going to be saved," said Katherine Bellows, assistant dean
and director of International Student and Scholar Services at Georgetown.
"Why bother wasting staff time?"

The printing errors are among the most bizarre. When Duke University
officials tried to print forms for their visiting scholars, what popped out
were sensitive, visa-related records for foreign scholars from other
colleges.

"We're not hacking (into their computer systems)," said Catheryn Cotten,
director of the international office at Duke's Medical Center and Health
System. "But is has the same effect."

In another disconcerting mistake, a Belgian psychologist headed to Michigan
State on a postdoctoral fellowship had his passport taken by the U.S.
Consulate in Brussels when officers could not find his records in the SEVIS
database. After nearly a month of uncertainty, the researcher was granted
his visa, according to school officials.

"This would be funny if it weren't so serious," said Terry Hartle, senior
vice president of the American Council on Education, a Washington-based
organization that represents 1,800 college and university presidents. "But
INS had ample warning, and they ignored it."

University officials say that in the month since it has been compulsory to
use SEVIS to track international students, staff members have spent untold
hours trying to resolve data-entry problems.

"I think the system is just overwhelmed," said Ravi Shankar, director of
the international office at Northwestern University. "We just hope they do
something about it."

The officials also fear it's only going to get worse in coming months, when
hundreds of thousand of students seek entry to study in the United States
and a similar number of graduates seek to stay for postgraduate studies or
training.

"We are very worried about what will happen next," Cotten said.

Peter Briggs, director of the office for International Students and
Scholars at Michigan State, said in addition to the psychologist stuck in
Brussels, he's had an Egyptian student marooned for several days in Toronto
and visa-related documents turning up on a printer at Arizona State
University in Tempe. "We want to be helpful," Briggs said. "But it's very
frustrating when you've got 4,500 people to keep in status in a time of
zero tolerance."

University officials say much of their frustration stems from the lack of
flexibility in the SEVIS system.

In the case of the Southeastern University student, university officials
say the matter could have been avoided if SEVIS had allowed the university
to fix the student's record.

Southeastern's Jarvis said the school noticed in December that the
student's record erroneously showed she had dropped out. But Jarvis, who
declined to identify the student, said the school's attempts to correct
that record were blocked.

Jarvis said that at 8 a.m. March 12, federal agents appeared at the young
woman's house and during their interview learned that she was working part
time at a restaurant.

Although education officials say that employment outside a university
without permission is a potential violation of a student's visa, they say
it's unlikely it would lead to an arrest.

Jarvis said the student was led away in handcuffs. She has since been
released.

"You can't fight terrorism by terrorizing the students," Jarvis said.

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld ... ug09,0,156
0368.story

Disappearances not unusual
Officials say case of 11 Egyptian men here on student visas who never
arrived at at school is common

BY TOM BRUNE
Newsday Washington Bureau

August 9, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The disappearance of 11 Egyptian men who arrived at Kennedy
Airport with student visas late last month is not unusual, according to the
Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau.

Immigration agents are investigating about 1,300 leads on visa violations
by students or exchange visitors who were flagged by the foreign-student
tracking system known as SEVIS for such things as not showing up at school,
ICE statistics show.

And, since 2003, agents have arrested more than 1,800 students and exchange
visitors who violated immigration law according to SEVIS notifications, the
statistics show.

"This is not uncommon," ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said of the missing
Egyptian students. "We get quite a large number of what would be called
notifications that suggest that students may be in violation of their
visas."

ICE counsel Victor Cerda last year put the number of SEVIS notifications of
potential violations at 1,000 a week.

There are nearly a million foreign students and exchange visitors with
visas in the United States, Boyd said.

Critics of the immigration system, and congressional Republicans demanding
tougher enforcement, have complained about ineffective tracking of foreign
students.

Often in hearings aimed at promoting the enforcement-only immigration bill,
House Republicans point out that many of the 9/11 hijackers were here
legally on student visas.

While SEVIS results in many notifications, Boyd said a vetting process
finds that there is no violation in the majority of the cases, either
because the visa holder adjusted his status to remain here legally or left
the country on his own.

In the case of the 11 Egyptian students from Mansoura University near
Cairo, however, Boyd said they violated their visas by failing to show up
at a cultural exchange program at Montana State University in July. Their
visas have been revoked.

The FBI issued a public alert for the students although they represent no
threat, FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said, because "in the post-9/11
world the rules have changed. The U.S. wants to assure that foreign
students that register to come to the U.S. attend the schools for which
they applied for a visa."

Meanwhile, the search continues. An ICE agent yesterday interviewed the six
Mansoura University students who made it to Montana State, college
spokeswoman Cathy Conover said.

I had heard they found all the Egyptian students.

Is our government going to spend precious time and resources keeping track of the new 'students'?