Schools required to track foreign students

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Friday that a new Internet-based tracking system will replace the old paper method for monitoring foreign students who come to the United States. Schools will be required to track everything from when a student enrolls at the institution to any disciplinary action taken against the person.\nBut Ted Goode, director of services for International Students and Scholars at the University of California-Berkeley, said he's concerned because university officials have yet to see the system that will help them track the whereabouts of the more than 4,000 foreign students and visiting scholars at the school.\nHe worries that last minute technical glitches may make it difficult to meet the Jan. 30 deadline.\n"Moving a system of the size we have to move into a system that we do not yet know is going to be challenging," Goode said. "It's kind of like flying through a very thick fog."\nVictor Johnson, associate executive director for policy for the Association of International Educators, said the Immigration and Naturalization Services knows that the Jan. 30 deadline announced by Ashcroft cannot be met.\n"The possibility that every university in the country will be in compliance is just non-existent," he said. "Schools will want to comply and will do everything they can to comply but they're not going to be able to meet that deadline."\nEducators have long known that a new method for tracking foreign students would be put into place, but efforts to revamp the system gained new urgency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Revelations that several of the hijackers involved in the attacks were in the country on student visas were a major embarrassment for the INS.\nINS officials said the electronic tracking system will cut down on fraud because there will be no paper forms that can be copied or forged. Under the new rules, schools will also be required to report students who fail to enroll within 30 days of the student's expected registration date. Though Jan. 30 is the deadline for compliance, institutions can begin voluntary use of the system this July.\n"I think it's doable, it's definitely going to be a lot of work," said Helen Stevens, director of international programs and services at San Jose State University, which has about 1,400 foreign students. "A part of me dreads it because it sounds so huge."\nFlight training schools, which came under scrutiny in the days post Sept. 11, are also among the institutions required to participate in the monitoring system. Several of the hijackers learned to fly at training schools in Florida.\nBecause they work with smaller numbers of foreign students, local flight schools said it might be easier for them to meet the new reporting regulations.\nJim McLaughlin, flight school manager, for Trade Winds Aviation in San Jose, said any new electronic reporting requirements will probably be far less cumbersome than the reams of paperwork his school is currently required to file.\nHiro Takai, owner of the Nice Air flight training school said he welcomes the new tracking system.\n"I totally agree with the government," he said. "We should track students more carefully."\nStill, large institutions will face a sizable task.\nAt Stanford University, officials said, the effort to move to an electronic tracking system may be easier because international student records are already kept in electronic form.\nYet even though Stanford University has been preparing for electronic monitoring, John Pearson, director of the Bechtel International Center said meeting the deadline will be a push. But "if the mandate is Jan. 31 we will have to have it done by Jan. 31," he added.\nAs the deadline approaches, Pearson said, "there are two parties under the gun: the INS and the schools. The INS cannot be seen to mess up and again. And the schools can't be seen to have any objections on this. We're now partners on this whether we like it or not"