在后9/11世界成为国际生

在后9/11世界成为国际生
 

“给我你的疲惫，你的贫穷，你蜷缩着向往的自由“而不单单只是你的学生。
 

“我知道在9/11之后即将会发生什么，那就是理解”。塔里克哈勒拉说道，一位二十一岁就读于波士顿大学的学生。他的理解很简单：作为一名国际生，在美国的生活永远不会是和以前一样相同的。哈勒拉，印度本土出生，在美国学习超过两年，他学习的是会计专业并且能流利地说四国语言：英语，阿拉伯语，印地语，古吉拉特语。
 

他说“我爱美国，也喜欢呆在这里”，“这就是为什么当我接到从国际学生办公室打来的电话会十分担心，说我可能被驱逐出境”。
 

新的移民法则给了他第一次驱逐恐惧的混乱感，移民及海关执法局严格的新签证政策保证开展了学生和交流访问者的信息系统。
 

Being An International Student in a Post 9/11 World 

 

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free," just not your students. 

 

"I knew what was going to happen after 9/11. It was understood," said Tariq Halela, a 21-year-old student at Boston University. What he understood was simple: for an international student, living in the United States would never be the same. 

Halela, an Indian born Kuwaiti native, has been studying stateside for over two years. He is an accounting major and speaks four languages -- English, Arabic, Hindi and Gujarati -- fluently. 

 

"I love it here in the states," he said. "That is why I was so worried when I got a call from the ISO [international student's office] saying I could be deported." 

 

Confusion over the new immigration rules and regulations is what gave Halela his first deportation scare. With stricter visas guidelines, the culmination of new policies the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have undertaken is the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. 

 

Now, new international students can choose to study at any one of the over 7,000 SEVIS-certified universities in America. The schools, in turn, provide a plethora of information on the students ranging from the mundane - name, enrollment verification, date of birth - to the normally considered private information such as grades and field of study. Essentially, the SEVIS is a program designed to keep tabs on all the approximately one million international students studying here in the U.S. The SEVIS keeps a database housing all of a student's information to determine whether he or she can stay in the U.S. or can be allowed to come here in the first place. #p#分页标题#e#

 

Although the program seems like a reaction to the 9/11 attacks, the birth of SEVIS dates back to the early '90s. One of the men convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Eyad Ismoil, had gained access to the U.S. through a student visa. In an attempt to help regulate the student visas system, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which commissioned the government to create a system that manages information on all international students but Congress never pressed to make that system operational. 

 

When it was learned that two of the 9/11 highjackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehi, also came tot he U.S. through student visas, Congress changed their tune. It passed the Patriot Act and Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act which required the SEVIS program to be operational by Jan. 1, 2003. 

 

For international students, SEVIS most likely will amount to benign headaches in the form of hurried deadlines and tedious forms. But for Halela, it almost meant being arrested and deportated. 

 

"The policy is that I have to register within 15 days to the ISO. The only problem was that I was never aware of this," said Halela. "I got notice from U.S. immigration the day before I went to the states so I didn't have time to go over it." 

 

This registration procedure is the most important piece to the SEVIS program. It tries to ensure that international students are doing what they are supposed to be doing -- studying. The major loop hole in the previous system was that no one checked to see whether international students were actually enrolled in classes. Eyad Ismoil was enrolled at the University of Kansas, but dropped out. 

 

As a result of his confusion with the registration process, Halela has spent the last five months, keeping in contact with immigration in order to straighten everything out only to be met by complacent clerks and more red tape. 

 

For all international students, these new hassles seem to have taken an effect. International student enrollment increased only by 0.6 percent in the 2002-2003 school year, the lowest rate of increase since 1995 according to the annual study published by the Institute of International Education (IIE) last November. Other findings were that the sharpest drop-offs in international student enrollment came for Middle Eastern Countries and that most, 59 percent, of participating universities attributed these declines to the new stringent visa application process. 

 

Boston hosts the third largest population of international student in the country, behind Los Angeles and New York. Boston College host nearly 1,000 international students and scholars, Northeastern University over 2,700, Boston University over 5,600. International students are a main part of any university and anything that would potentially deter them from studying in the U.S. could hit universities where it hurts the most - their pocket books. #p#分页标题#e#

 

According to the study, international students spend an estimated $12 billion here in the U.S. and are the largest portion of the student population to pay tuition cost unsubsidized. 

 

"More and more [international students] are choosing to go to other places such as the U.K. or Canada. One of the major reasons is because it is just easier to go to Canada. Immigration there is a piece of cake," said Halela. 

 

But from a governmental standpoint, the main purpose of the new immigration policies and the SEVIS fact sheet complied by the Department of Homeland Security, the program "will significantly reduce the exploitation of the immigration laws, but ensure that all legitimate foreign students enter the United States" and "allows ICE to analyze information about all foreign students and exchange visitors to look for trends that might indicate a potential security or terrorist threat." 

 

Now the SEVIS has become a symbol of anti-terrorism measures gone too far. X-raying shoes at the airports is one thing, but tracking and compiling information on college students seems a little much to some. Before SEVIS, the records of all students, including international ones, have been kept private under the protection of FERPA, the Family Education Records Protection Act. But now, FERPA protection has been waived for international student records, allowing the Federal Government to request information on topics such as "student misconduct," which includes criticism of the government and non-violent civil disobedience, and a student's field of study, red flagging some "sensitive" research work and majors for their potential to be used in weapons development. 

 

A group called Refuse and Resist, a national organization committed to social justice activism, has launched a campaign to stop SEVIS. Their main goal is to raise awareness about the invasiveness and potential dangers of the program saying that the SEVIS program is just a form of racial and ideological profiling. 

 

"The U.S government says SEVIS will help stop terrorism. But the truth is that there's no evidence that SEVIS will have any abating effect on terrorist activity. International students are already one of the most closely watched groups within the United States as the INS monitors them regularly. SEVIS is an invasion of privacy by Big Brother and a tracking system based on nationality and race that aims to criminalize and to intimidate," said Michael Johansson, a member of the Honolulu chapter of Refuse and Resist that spearheaded the stop SEVIS campaign. 

 

Refuse and Resist's efforts have not had the effect organizers would have hoped for. The plight of international student falls on deaf ears as SEVIS and all its impacts are relative unknowns to the public consciousness. #p#分页标题#e#

 

"No one really knows what is going on to us. I mean it is kind of weird. There is a form called the F-20 with a barcode on it that if scanned tells everything about me. I mean everything; form where I live, what my classes are. It goes on," said Halela. 

 

But despite the problems the SEVIS program causes, the U.S. remains the number one host destination for international students. Student immigration from countries such as Indian, China, Korea, Kenya and Mexico are actually up this year. But after a decade of rapid increasing of international student enrollment, it is undeniable that something has changed. 

 

Halela, having straightened out his visas woes, is not worried. He said, "Everyone definitely should still come to the U.S. The education system is the best in the world, and it is a blast over here."