Universities Spying on Foreign Students Congress 
Wants to Bar Their Entry 

Taking advantage of the World Trade Center and 
Pentagon attacks, anti-immigration forces in 
government are moving to restrict new foreign 
students from entering the United $tates, and 
increasing their surveillance of those already 
here. MIM and RAIL are particularly disgusted to 
see colleges and universities -- supposed bastions 
of intellectual freedom -- cooperating with the 
government and agreeing to participate in the 
policing of their sojourner students. This is not 
about students breaking laws. This is about spying 
on what students study and spend money on. It is 
about monitoring students who change their major 
or quit school. We call on all U$ students to 
unite against these measures. Everyone on a 
college campus today should be finding a way to 
stop their administrators from serving as agents 
of repression in the so-called "new war." 

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, representing 
California, a state with a long criminal record of 
abusing immigrants, announced that she would 
propose a six-month moratorium on new foreign 
student visas, until the Immigration and 
Naturalization Service can strengthen its 
surveillance capabilities. Feinstein is supporting 
full funding (upwards of $30 million) to implement 
the INS foreign student computer tracking system 
(Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVP). 
In addition, she would have the system "include 
fingerprint data, ... require the immigration 
service to conduct comprehensive background checks 
on foreign student applicants before the State 
Department can approve visas,"(1) and expand the 
tracking to "include spouses and children of 
foreign students." Finally, Feinstein's bill would 
mandate that schools report to the INS quarterly 
about the academic status of foreign students.(6) 
Foreign students will be forced to fund this new 
system with their fees.(1) 

Some of these ideas for increased monitoring are 
not new; rather, they represent the enforcement of 
the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant 
Responsibility Act of 1996" (PL 104-208). NAFSA: 
Association of International Educators, a public 
policy group who had previously opposed the 
electronic student tracking system outlined in the 
1996 law, has now meekly changed its position. 
"The time for debate on this matter is over," they 
said, "and the time to devise a considered 
response to terrorism has arrived. We would 
welcome the opportunity to discuss this response 
with the [Bush] administration and Congress."(2) 

California alone has more than 66,000 foreign 
students on visas (3); countrywide, more than 
500,000 international students enter the U$ every 
year on visas.(4) The internationalist wing of the 
U$ bourgeoisie, along with their research and 
development partners in higher education, have 
traditionally opposed this kind of immigration 
restriction because the Third World "brain drain" 
has been such a boon to the U$ economy, 
particularly in the sciences and technology --
fields now likely to raise the specter of 
terrorism. Even for non-research universities, the 
loss of foreign student tuition would be a minor 
blow, and some colleges are opposing the Feinstein 
moratorium on these grounds. 

U$ seeking student records now 

Alarmingly, the Los Angeles Times reported that 
government agents have asked "dozens" of colleges 
and universities across the U$ for records of 
foreign students since September 11. These 
requests have ranged from targeting several 
students on a campus to asking for records on all 
foreign students, or all Middle Eastern students. 
The federal Department of Education is advising 
colleges and universities that the September 11 
attacks constitute a "health and safety 
emergency," which would allow them to circumvent 
the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act 
(FERPA), the law protecting the privacy of student 
records, and preventing their release without 
student consent.(5) In California, seven of the 23 
California State University campuses have turned 
over these records ITAL without a subpoena. END 
(1). The reactionary logic goes like this: in an 
"extraordinary situation" when the stakes are 
highest for the students under scrutiny, 
cooperating with the government is more important 
than upholding the bourgeois democratic freedoms 
these students are supposed to have. 

MIM believes in opening the U$ borders entirely to 
the world's proletariat. Anti-student measures, in 
particular, could have a chilling effect on 
foreign student political activism, which has 
historically been a positive influence on U$ 
students. MIM believes that all students have a 
unique obligation to oppose anti-immigrant, anti-
foreign student legislation. 

Notes: 
1. Los Angeles Times 29 Sept. 2001. 
2. NAFSA web site: 
http://www.nafsa.org/content/PublicPolicy/NAFSAont
heIssues/ ciprishome.htm 
3. http://www.nafsa.org 
4. San Francisco Chronicle 28 Sept 2001. 
5. "Government bypasses FERPA to access student 
records," Student Press Law Center, 
http://www.splc.org/newsflashes/2001/092501dc.html 
6. Senator Dianne Feinstein Homepage: 
http://www.senate.gov/~feinstein/releases01/stvisa
s1.htm