May 16, 2002
The Oregonian
By Bill Graves
College administrators gathered at Lewis & Clark College on Wednesday to learn how they will use the Internet to track foreign students.
Colleges, universities, vocational and trade schooks, including some beauty schools, will be required to use the system by early next year or stop accepting foreign students.
The new system, being developed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, is designed to replace an antiquated paper process that allowed some of the Sept. 11 terrorists to wander the nation with their student visas.
"There is no real-time tracking, which we want after Sept. 11." said Ed Sale, INS spokesman in Portland. "This is a learning process for all of us."
The new electronic Student & Exchange Visitor Program, which will be available after July 1, requires foreign students to declare to the U.S. consulate in their countries the U.S. college or school they will attend. [Students already do this now, but the new system will give both INS and schools precise information when students enter the United States, and when they enroll in and leave these schools. Until now, it has taken INS 10 to 14 months to inform schools that a student has entered the country, so students could have a year or more in the U.S. before a school could inform INS if they never enrolled. Capstone EMC Editor]
Students will be issued numbers and their applications will be filed on an Internet site based in the U.S. Department of Justice and checked by the INS at a student's port of entry into the United States. Host schools will signal the INS when students arrive or if they fail to arrive. [Not quite true. The system is expected to "go live" on the Internet July 1. All schools, ports of entry, and consular offices are expected to be participating in January 2003. Until then, participation is voluntary as agencies and schools install or upgrade computer systems, so not all student information will be available in the INS database at first. After January 2003, however, schools will first note in the system when they issue documents to a prospective student. Consular offices overseas will then note when (and if) they authorize a visa for entry into the U.S., and ports of entry will note when a student enters the country. Finally, schools will note when a student enrolls. However, if a student does not appear at the proper school within 60 days after arrival in the U.S., the new system will automatically classify the student as a "no-show" at school and inform INS enforcement officials. Capstone EMC Editor]
Colleges will be able to send information to the INS and the Department of State electronically throughout a student's stay. If a student drops out of school or otherwise falls out of status, INS will be informed immediately.
Robert Wilmore, an INS computer analyst helping to develop the new system in Washington, D.C., said the system will be easy to use and extremely secure. It will be stored in several sites and have backups, virus protections and a firewall.
"I don't think you are going to be in too much trouble," he told international student directors representing about 35 area colleges and universities at the daylong workshop. The seminar, the first on the West Coast, will be offered in Eugene today.
International program administrators said the Internet tracking plan will complicate their work during the transition but ultimately should produce a more efficient system.
"It's the implementation that has us more concerned than the actual concept," said Dawn White, director of International Education Services at Portland State University, which enrolls about 1,400 foreign students a year. "We don't know yet what it is going to cost, what it is going to mean in training our people."
Marie Gemender, international admissions specialist at Maryhurst University, which enrolls about 100 foreigners, said the new system will give government and colleges better, quicker information.
"It will be good for everybody," she said. "It is good for students, too."
You can reach Bill Graves at 503-221-8549 or by e-mail at billgraves@news.oregonian.com