[ALBSA-Info] INS to hire Private Eyes

[Kreshnik Bejko]

Private Eyes Bid to Help the INS
To Track Foreign Students in U.S.

By ANN DAVIS and CHRIS OSTER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Foreign students, already facing scrutiny on campus from the FBI, could soon 
find themselves under the watchful eyes of private gumshoes.

Background-check companies and gun-toting bounty hunters are just two of the 
businesses vying for contracts from the Immigration and Naturalization 
Service to help track foreign students who come to the U.S. on student 
visas. Improved surveillance of students has become a top priority in 
Washington after the discovery that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers came here 
on student visas and didn't pursue their study plans.

Although the INS hasn't specified the precise systems it hopes to build, a 
spokesman says it plans to upgrade its limited student database. Some 
companies say their businesses would dovetail nicely with the task of 
finding foreign students who fail to show up for class -- or don't enroll at 
all.

ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga., a big collector of public records and 
other data about credit-card holders, plans to propose phone banks to call 
schools and verify that students have actually enrolled and actually are 
attending classes. In multiple meetings with the INS, vice president Jim 
Zimbardi says he has made the case that "if the student is not regularly 
attending class we're going to locate the student at his last, best known 
address."

ChoicePoint also is working with a computer-networking company it declines 
to name to compete for the bigger job of building the INS's new database for 
all 547,000 foreign students in the U.S.

Prompted by reports that terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center 
bombing had entered on student visas, Congress passed a law calling for a 
database to track when students received visas and enrolled and what they 
were studying. So far, though, INS has implemented the system only as a 
pilot project in 32 academic institutions in five states; the rest of the 
nation's colleges and universities submit records on paper. The pilot system 
tracks when foreign students arrive and enroll, but has no provision to 
check that students are really attending class.

Capital Bonding Corp., of Reading, Pa., one of the nation's largest writers 
of bail-bonds, plans to suggest that students entering the country be 
required to purchase a $10,000 immigration bond and to check in 
periodically. If the students fail to show up in its system, Capital Bonding 
would send one of its 700 bail agents and 500 bounty hunters in 37 states to 
find them.

Capital Bonding already monitors more than 10,000 foreign nationals who were 
required to buy immigration bonds because of visa violations, says chief 
executive Vincent J. Smith.

Some international education groups argue that tracking students -- while 
tourists and other visa-holders slip into the ether -- is intrusive and 
inefficient. "Having a bunch of gumshoes running around making sure they get 
up at seven and go to class is silly," says Victor Johnson of the 
Association of International Educators.

Some students are concerned that simple class-skipping or trips overseas to 
visit their families would trigger unreasonable suspicion. "A small slip 
could lead to huge problems," says Abhay Shah, a 25-year-old graduate 
student from India at the University of Georgia.

Some states are trying to supplement federal immigration efforts. Last week, 
a Georgia lawmaker introduced a bill that would require colleges to report 
to the INS any student on a student visa who fails to appear for class for 
two consecutive weeks, unless the student has provided a medical 
explanation. Rep. Chuck Sims, the author of the bill, doesn't think his 
proposal would overburden universities. "All you've got to do is pick up the 
phone. ... Just say Moammar Gadhafi here didn't show up," he says.

A number of university officials say such plans may be unrealistic. Lelia 
Crawford, director of international student and scholar programs at Emory 
University in Atlanta, says, "For larger classes, and even some smaller 
ones, faculty members don't take roll and probably don't know all the 
students."

Foreign student advisers say the systems now in place have holes. Dr. 
Nicholas Arrindell, who heads international students services at Johns 
Hopkins University, Baltimore, says the school frequently offers admission 
and sends a form, called an I-20, to students that it never hears from 
again. Students can take the I-20 to U.S. embassies overseas to apply for a 
student visa. It is possible, he said, that some students may enter the U.S. 
with I-20s from Johns Hopkins, but then never enroll at the school.

"Some are very polite and say 'I'm not attending Hopkins, I'm going to 
Columbia.' " says Dr. Arrindell. "But many don't inform us at all." Still, 
he argues that foreign-student advisers' offices -- not private companies -- 
are the best-equipped to keep track of their own students.

Write to Ann Davis at ann.davis at wsj.com and Chris Oster at 
chris.oster at wsj.com

Updated February 11, 2002 12:01 a.m.


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