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Institute of International Education
809 United Nations Plaza
7th Floor
New York, NY 10017
USA
Tel: +1 (212) 984 5367
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The Columbus Dispatch November 13, 2001 Tuesday, Home Final Edition
Copyright 2001 The Columbus Dispatch
The Columbus Dispatch
November 13, 2001 Tuesday, Home Final Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 04A
LENGTH: 675 words
HEADLINE: FOREIGN STUDENTS FRET ABOUT PROPOSED NEW RULES FOR VISAS
BYLINE: Alice Thomas, Dispatch Higher Education Reporter
BODY:
With their visas under increasing scrutiny, students from other countries are worried about going home during Christmas break, fearing they won't be able to return.
"It's already a long process, with a lot of security- checking. I don't understand why they want to ban it," said Esmael Haddadian, a 29-year-old Ohio State University student from Iran.
Haddadian and fellow Iranian students are jittery about a proposal in the U.S. Senate that calls for closer monitoring of foreign students and a ban on visas for students from countries considered to be sponsors of terrorism. The countries are Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Because he's Iranian, Haddadian said, he has a single- entry visa that's good for only three months. When he wanted to go home this summer, he had to drive twice to Canada, which has an Iranian embassy, to renew his visa -- once to apply for it and a second time to pick it up.
But with borders under tighter control and President Bush ordering a thorough review of the nation's student- visa system, Haddadian, a graduate student in physics, says now he would hesitate to do that.
Alam Payind, an international studies professor at Ohio State, has been getting calls from students seeking his advice on travel.
"I advise them that it's their decision to make -- whether they want to take the risk or not," Payind said. "Many of them are not going home for vacation."
Ohio State has 21 students from the seven countries -- 16 from Iran, four from Syria and one from Iraq, said John E. Greisberger, director of OSU's Office of International Education.
The College of Wooster doesn't have any students from those countries but has reports of similar fears.
"We definitely have students who are concerned about their ability to re-enter if they go home for winter break," said Karen Edwards, adviser to international students at the school.
Wooster is a small, liberal-arts college with a relatively large number of international students -- 119, or about 8 percent of its student body.
Edwards says her role is to support students, so the government's talk of turning colleges into small border patrols makes her uncomfortable.
"The concern for me is seeing us as an arm of the government and seeing us as doing what INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) should be doing, as a monitor of the borders," she said.
"We're not the enforcer of law. We're the adviser to students. That's our first concern."
Another fear for colleges is that their recruiting efforts will suffer from the uncertain fate of student visas.
"If we make it too difficult for students to come to the U.S., they will go to countries like Australia, New Zealand and England," Greisberger said. "That would hurt the country, and colleges and universities."
Suzanne Petrusch, director of international admissions at the University of Dayton, shares the concern.
"For several years, Great Britain and Australia have been positioning themselves to be competitive in the international education market," Petrusch said. "If we enact policies that will make it much more difficult for serious students to come to the U.S., I have little doubt they will look to other countries."
The half-million international students in the United States contributed about $12 billion to the U.S. economy last year, according to the Institute of International Education, based in New York.
Greisberger favors developing a better monitoring system but not one that would "reduce our ability to compete for the best foreign students from around the world."
Tom Koop, director of international student services at Ashland University, is among education officials who think tracking students -- and other foreign visitors -- should be the job of the INS.
"We need to do a better job of screening who comes to the U.S., not only as students but those who come as tourists or business visitors," Koop said. "And INS needs a much better system for tracking the non-immigrants who come to the U.S."
athomas@dispatch.com
GRAPHIC: Photo, Esmael Haddadian, an Iranian graduate student at Ohio State, University, fears that leaving the United States would put his ability to, return at risk.
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