Feinstein Bill Faulty

In the weeks since Sept. 11, American educators and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have been concerned by reports that some of those suspected of taking part in the attacks entered this country using student visas. Though some of the “students” never attended school, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was unaware of their activities. In an attempt to make it more difficult for foreign terrorists to hide in the U.S. by posing as students, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) has proposed a bill to keep closer tabs on foreigners studying in this country. Unfortunately, the provisions of the bill are both harsh and ill-focused. Should the bill pass, it would discourage many foreign students and few foreign terrorists.

Most notably, the bill would impose a six-month moratorium on new student visas to foreign students. It would also encourage the INS to implement a long-planned electronic system to track the half-million foreign students studying in the U.S. Currently, there is no consistent system of making sure students don’t overstay their visas and no way to enforce their legal obligations regarding academic work.

Previous efforts to track the activities of foreign students have moved slowly and have had little success. The current effort, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, is expected to receive a $43 million boost from the Bush Administration, but Feinstein believes that a moratorium is also necessary to prevent terrorists from entering the U.S. before the system is ready.

The bill has been strongly opposed by education lobbyists, and Harvard has criticized certain parts of the legislation as highly flawed. It is easy to see why: of the estimated 31 million foreign citizens who entered the U.S. on a visa in 1999, fewer than 2 percent were students. The proposed moratorium would therefore be an ineffective way of preventing terrorists from reaching American soil, but it would create significant barriers for students abroad who legitimately wish to study in the U.S. It would also cost America’s colleges a significant amount of money in tuition fees.

It is a reasonable goal for the INS to monitor foreign students more closely for visa violations and to ask colleges to confirm that they are students in good standing. Overstaying a student visa is illegal immigration, after all. However, some of Feinstein’s proposals go too far in monitoring the lives of foreign students. If students have entered the U.S. to study for a specific purpose, the INS should be able to enforce its requirements; however, there is no reason to require colleges to send the government quarterly grade reports for all those on student visas.

The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that some schools have been asked to give the government lists of all foreign students currently attending, or just the list of foreign students from the Middle East. Although it is important to monitor suspicious activities, collecting information about students just because of their country of origin is not only distressing for privacy advocates; it is also unlikely to catch many terrorists.

But perhaps the best argument against making it more difficult and intrusive to enter this country to study is that America is the school of the world. Foreign students learn skills here that they can take back to their homes and use to spread American ideals of free inquiry and personal liberty. American students themselves also benefit from interacting with those from other countries, and our campuses are enriched by foreign students’ presence.

While we cannot let foreign terrorists use our schools as Trojan horses, we must realize that security will come when terrorists organizations are destroyed. Making life difficult for innocent foreign scholars is not the right way to fight our nation’s new war on terror.