National Commission on Terrorism Report: Impact on Foreign Students and Minorities

A second panel of experts addressed the controversial recommendation of a national commission to monitor the course work of foreign students at U.S. universities. If implemented, such monitoring would be done in addition to an existing INS program that is now in its pilot phase, the Coordinated Interagency Partnership Regulating International Students (CIPRIS). CIPRIS is an Internet-based system that allows universities and colleges to electronically file information about the status of their foreign students directly to the INS.

Experts at the forum acknowledged that terrorism is a real threat in this country and that public officials are justifiably concerned with accurate immigration reporting. However, there was consensus that some of the measures proposed and currently implemented in a pilot program at 21 southern colleges and universities will do little if anything to deter terrorism, but could serve to limit the number of foreign students who choose to study here. The panelists further agreed that singling out nuclear physics and related sciences as "sensitive" fields of study made little sense; that information technology is a much more sensitive field in terms of its ability to disrupt the economy and activities of a nation.

Victor Johnson, Associate Executive Director for Public Policy at NAFSA: Association of International Educators, said monitoring students should never have been a part of the report on terrorism as there is no evidence to support that terrorists are using student visas to gain entry to this country. Laws that seek to track foreign students should be "anathema to our society," Johnson said.

Johnson pointed out that policies that deter foreign students from attending U.S. schools are counterproductive, depriving educational institutions of a tremendously valuable resource. Enrollment of foreign students at U.S. institutions of higher education allows "us to train the next generation of world leaders. That should be a national security asset," Johnson said. Furthermore, in conjunction with bringing vast intellectual and cultural resources to our educational system, foreign students contribute some $11 billion per year to the U.S. economy, according to Johnson. Almost all of them pay full tuition, he noted, which, in effect, subsidizes many disadvantaged American students at colleges and universities.

The proposed vehicle for student monitoring—the CIPRIS electronic data reporting system—was explained by Catheryn Cotten, Director, International Office of Duke University, a CIPRIS participant. Cotten said that while the INS has the right to know if a student has enrolled, monitoring courses of studies is a "useless" thing to do, given the potentially more fruitful avenues for combating terrorism. Most foreign nationals "coming in high tech fields are not coming to the universities but to the businesses that are creating software that are supposed to protect our information technology systems," she said with irony. The higher education system might be an easy place to monitor, Cotten said, but, given current information, "not the best place to go looking for terrorists."

AAAS President Mary Good, who chaired the panel, concluded by saying that "while terrorism is a very real issue, we have to decide how we manage these very difficult issues in a democracy. How do you go about prioritizing the biggest threats and problems? Where do you put your resources?"