The government's system for tracking foreign students is inadequate and planned improvements won't be ready by a January deadline, the Justice Department reported Monday in a 188-page report from its Office of Inspector General, which cites "untimely and significantly flawed" procedures at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
In discussing the ability of INS to track foreign students, the Executive Summary states:
"Third, with regard to our review of the INS's system for monitoring and tracking foreign students in the United States, it is clear that the INS's current, paper-based system is antiquated and inadequate. The INS is developing and will soon implement an automated computer tracking system - the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). SEVIS will be a significant advance and will help address many of the failings of the current system. But SEVIS alone will not solve the problems of the INS's tracking of foreign students. For example, the INS must review and properly re-certify the thousands of schools that are currently certified to enroll foreign students, must ensure that its employees and schools timely and accurately enter information into SEVIS, and must ensure that the information from SEVIS is analyzed and used adequately. We also believe that it is unlikely that the INS will be able to meet the January 30, 2003, deadline for full implementation of SEVIS."
The OIG report goes on to state that unless the INS addresses the critical issues in the report, "the impact of SEVIS will be minimal."
The title of the report is The Immigration and Naturalization Service's Contacts With Two September 11 Terrorists: A Review of the INS's Admissions of Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, its Processing of their Change of Status Applications, and its Efforts to Track Foreign Students in the United States. The complete report is available on-line in PDF format at http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/2002_05/fullreport.pdf. The executive summary is available on-line in HTML format at http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/2002_05/exec.htm.
Posted May 21, 2002 on www.nasfaa.org, Web Site of the
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
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