I THOUGHT that Congress had discontinued witch hunts. I also thought that this country supports intellectual curiosity among all nationalities.
So I was shocked to read that the government has decided to fight terrorism with a databank that monitors foreign students studying in the United States and will make them pay the cost. The Immigration and Naturalization Service's plan to monitor international students and to make them pay for it is unjustified and will make studying here impossible for many foreign students.
The INS has attempted to keep track of foreign students in the past but only to catch students who overstay their visas. This consisted of universities keeping track of their numbers of foreign students and their graduation status. Now, however, the INS wants to record name, address, country of origin and major, all in a central databank, which is much more intrusive.
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The desire to play Big Brother comes from the idea that these students pose a risk of terrorism. The recommendation came in a report released in June by the National Commission on Terrorism, appointed by Congress. The Commission felt that if "an Iraqi student studying literature at an American university switched his major to nuclear physics," the U.S. government should know ("U.S. Commission on Terrorism Urges Close Scrutiny of All Foreign Students," The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 15, 2000) in order to keep an eye on the student.
This viewpoint stupidly suggests that certain majors are too "dangerous" for foreign students to take. American students switch majors constantly, and we don't accuse them of sedition. Nor did we keep track of Communists at American universities and what majors they were studying, even at the height of the Cold War.
This prejudiced viewpoint lacks solid evidence. One administrator complained in The Chronicle that the same example is brought out again and again: that one of the World Trade Center bombers entered America on a student visa. Yet, after the Oklahoma City bombing, we didn't scrutinize soldiers' intellectual pursuits.
Even if this databank was justified, however, the program is unfairly structured. Students will be required to pay a fee of $95 which will finance the collection of their data.
To some, $95 may not seem like much money, but the exchange rate makes the fee comparatively more expensive abroad. Many families already have sacrificed to send their children to college, and these extra fees may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
Even if many foreign students can comes up with the extra $95, the actual cost will be higher for students in foreign countries. The Council for Education, an umbrella organization for higher education, points out that the government has ignored the practical difficulties that students in less developed countries will encounter.
In a letter to the INS (www.acenet.edu), the president of the American Council on Education argues that the program is based on the assumption that all students can get on the Internet and pay with their credit cards. Yet reliable Internet access is not available in many parts of the world.
In response to criticism, the INS also suggested that students use express mail. However, the letter points out that in many countries, "express" mail is not a workable option, and also that the INS will charge a $30 fee to use express mail, thus raising the cost to $125 for students in third world countries. The INS is trying to apply to everyone options that might work for Western Europeans with highly reliable mail systems and Internet, which shows a complete insensitivity to the differences in student situations.
Worst of all, the INS plans to enforce the regulations 30 days after they are published this summer. This hurts international students already accepted by adding another layer to the paperwork required to study in America. Even students able to afford the fees will have to race against time to get this done before classes start in the fall. The president of the Council for Eduation pointed out that most countries are making it easier for students to study abroad. More regulations will put American universities at a disadvantage.
Charging fees for surveillance of foreign students is unfairly prejudiced and could prevent many of them from coming here. The bogeyman of terrorism is being used to justify drastic measures. Yet in the end, we will lose our best goodwill ambassadors to these countries: students returning home with an American education.
(Elizabeth Managan's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at emanagan@cavalierdaily.com.)
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