The jury is still out on President George W. Bush’s call Monday to conduct a thorough review of student visa policies.
The directive came during the first meeting of the Homeland Security Council. At the meeting, Bush ordered Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft to enlist the help of Secretary of Education Rod Paige in instituting tighter controls and ensuring that student visas are being issued correctly.
“We plan on making sure that if a person has applied for a student visa, they actually go to college or a university,” Bush said during remarks made after the meeting. “And, therefore, we’re going to start asking a lot of questions that heretofore have not been asked.”
Higher education groups say it is too early to tell what changes will be made to the student visa program, which regulates the more than 500,000 international students and academics in the United States, including nearly 1,400 at the University.
“It appears as though the president was perhaps a half a step ahead of everyone else on this issue,” said Paul Hassen, assistant director of public affairs at American Council on Education, a group of 1,800 colleges and universities.
The Bush directive includes funding for a database run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service that would share information on foreign nationals with other government agencies.
“It seems that the administration is serious about letting the immigration service do the job they were supposed to do,” said Ginny Stark, associate director of the International Office of Education and Exchange. Stark referred to a 1996 law which charged the INS with setting up a database which would allow government agencies to track foreign nationals in the country. While the law created the database, it never gave any funding to the INS to pay for it.
Other than funding the database, Bush’s order lacked sufficient details to give higher education groups any chance to gauge what effects it will have.
“Oregon Student Association is traditionally opposed to legislation that broadly hinders access to groups of people,” said John Wykoff, legislative director of OSA. “Whether this administration will create a broad threat to access is hard to tell.”
Student visas have come under congressional scrutiny since the Sept. 11 attacks. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office reported that one of the hijackers of the Sept. 11 attacks was in the country on a student visa. In the weeks after the attack, Feinstein, D-Calif., called for a six-month moratorium on all student visas, but rescinded the proposal after meeting with concerned higher education groups.
Feinstein has since written legislation with Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., overhauling the student visa program. Feinstein and Kyl’s proposal requires the INS to conduct background checks before the state department can issue student visas and stop issuing student visas to individuals from countries included on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsored states, including Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Syria.
Hassen warned that with competing bills receiving hearings in Congress, not to mention visa plans submitted by ACE, legislative and higher education leaders should attempt to strike a balance between the desire for international students and national security.
“We have a good visa system,” he said. “It just needs a little tinkering.”
Bush’s plan only reviews student visa policies, not policies of other visa types, which sent up a red flag for Hassen.
“By focusing solely on student visas,” he said, “we are doing a disservice to holders of student visas and holders of all type of visas.”