Posted on 08/20/2006 5:09:36 PM PDT by PghBaldy
MANHATTAN, Kan. - On a recent afternoon at Kansas State University, a familiar set of late-summer rituals were under way. Piccolo and tuba players practiced their formations in clusters on the lawn, and fraternity hopefuls started Rush Week.
This semester, the central Kansas agricultural powerhouse was also preparing for its first-ever celebration of Ramadan to welcome the newest members of its student body: 150 students from Saudi Arabia.
This school year, college towns from Florida to Oregon will host an estimated 15,000 new Saudi students, nearly all of whom have full scholarships paid for by the Kingdom's royal family. They're part of a new exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah last year that will soon quintuple the number of Saudi students studying in the United States.
The U.S. State Department sees the exchange as a way to build ties with future Saudi leaders and young scholars at a time of unsteady relations with the Muslim world. The Kingdom says it will help stem unrest at home by schooling the country's brightest in the American tradition.
And public universities are eager for the tuition dollars.
"The Saudi scholarship program has definitely heightened our interest in that part of the world," said Kenneth Holland, Kansas State's associate provost for international programs. "Not only are the students fully funded, but they're also paying out-of-state tuition."
Many scholarship holders have already spent a year in the U.S. studying English, and are excelling in their studies, by most reports. But one former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security says efforts to fast-track educational diplomacy with the Muslim world should bear scrutiny, unless the government can ensure the proper safeguards are in place.
Industrial engineering student Marwan Al-Kadi grew up in Medina, the site of one of Islam's holiest shrines. After four years studying in the U.S., he's shared Thanksgiving turkeys with friends in Abilene and wears his dark hair long and curly, a bit like a character from "That 70s Show.
"As an advice, my dad told me to pick a small town so I came to Manhattan," he said, lounging in a cafe near campus, as his cell phone rang intermittently. "My English was messed up when I came. But there are very kind people here."
Al-Kadi said the government scholarship gives him about $31,000 per year to study and pay for a room in a house he shares with three other students. Saudi Embassy spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir said 90 percent of the 10,229 Saudi students the U.S. State Department has registered for this school year will also get scholarships.
By January, U.S. government officials say the program will expand to 15,000, which means Saudi Arabia will send more foreign students to the U.S. than Mexico or Turkey.
"This is a critically important bilateral relationship," said Tom Farrell, a deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department. "It's an opportunity to increase understanding of Saudi Arabia for the United States and of the United States for Saudi Arabia."
Kansas State administrators say common misperceptions about the oil-rich nation make it crucial to create a tolerant environment for Arab and Muslim students, who have been singled out for scrutiny and have been the focus of new laws compromising their civil liberties since September 11.
Before then, Saudi visa applicants were allowed to bypass the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh by submitting their applications to preapproved travel agencies, which forwarded them onto the consulate for approval or rejection. Three of the 15 Saudi terrorists used that program, dubbed "Visa Express," to enter the U.S.
"Since then, everything has changed," said Saudi government spokesman Al-Jubeir. "There are long lines to wait for a visa. Once they get in to a university here, they are checked and rechecked."
In 2002, Congress mandated that the Department of Homeland Security create the "Visa Security Officer" program in consular offices in Saudi Arabia. That would bump up security by allowing counterterrorism officials to check visa applications against lists of known or suspected terrorists, said Clark Kent Ervin, who took over as the department's Inspector General in 2003.
That same year, Congress also instituted the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System or SEVIS, which monitors all foreign students' activities - including where they live, whether they go to class, and whether they finish their studies.
All foreign students are tracked on that program, which Kansas State administrator Holland said made him feel "very comfortable."
So after a formal reception with Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. last semester, Kansas State officials sat down with diplomats to plan a trip to the Saudi Embassy in Washington to review more qualified students' files.
"We'll provide you with an office, there will be secretaries there to help you," Saudi cultural attache Mazyed Ibrahim Almazyed told the group. "You can have people bring you all the files. You'll be right there and we can show you what we have."
Kansas State University President Jon Wefald nodded his head.
"This is going to get us right through the State Department," he said.
"Plan on spending at least two days there," he told the department heads around the table.
"Don't forget the real decision makers, for example the local representatives in Congress," said Almazyed.
Last year, the Government Accountability Office presented Congress with a report on security in U.S. consular offices in Saudi Arabia. According to the GAO, the 10 temporary Visa Security Officers sent there in 2004 lacked any specialized training in counterterrorism, fraud detection and interview techniques.
By summer 2005, DHS had hired and trained four permanent employees for the post, but only two of them spoke Arabic. A spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of DHS, said all VSOs are now trained in visa security and that many staffers had 10 years experience in law enforcement. The department offers language training only "as necessary," he added.
Former DHS inspector general Ervin cites that as one of several ways in which the U.S. has mismanaged counterterrorism efforts since September 11 in his book, "Open Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack."
"The Department of Homeland Security is so inept and the VSO program is in its infancy, so fraud is entirely possible with students or anyone applying for visas from Saudi Arabia," he said.
The GAO reports the VSO program has expanded to Pakistan, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. DHS spokesman Dean Boyd said he could not provide details about its reach.
The electronic monitoring program, SEVIS, appears to be working well, though the blips it's caught recently illustrate the cultural gulf between the exchange students it tracks and their American hosts.
In May, two Saudi scholarship students monitored under SEVIS were held in solitary confinement in a county jail after riding a public school bus they thought would take them to their English classes at the University of South Florida.
"They thought they were allowed to ride it to take it to the university and people were making accusations like this was a dry run for a real terrorist attack," said Ahmed Bedier, director of the Tampa, Fla., office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "These youth are paying the price for things that they have no connection to. They're going to be the future in Saudi Arabia."
For Allan Goodman, president and CEO of the Institute of International Education in New York, the new bilateral agreement is a "tremendously positive" step toward person-to-person diplomacy.
"These 15,000 students will really jump start education and that will be a great addition to the Kingdom," said Goodman. "At its base, it's about mutual understanding."
The xenophiles, especially the french majors, will suck up to them.
"This is a critically important bilateral relationship," said Tom Farrell, a deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department. "It's an opportunity to increase understanding of Saudi Arabia for the United States and of the United States for Saudi Arabia."
Idiots like this Tom is why we face the perils we face today. 911 taught me all I need to know about Saudi muslims.
The question is, why do we sit idly by allowing bureaucratic idiots to make policy that can kill us, our children, and grandchildren?
"Other Muslim students in my classes such as Pakistanis and Bosnian Muslims were often quite good students and cared about learning."
The ones that study physics and chemistry are mostly totally dedicated to their studies. Those are subjects they can readily use in their future careers as terrorist trainers.
Imagine what the DHS budget will be in a couple of years. Trying to keep tabs on all these potential terrorists will be damned expensive ............. for the taxpayers!
We deserve what our elected officials do to us! We were the ones who put them in office and are the ones who are refusing to admit our ignorance and mistakes.
(I guess you can tell that I am fed up with reading about how glorious these sorry bastards truly are.)
Come listen to my story ‘bout a man named Achmed
A poor Bedouin barely kept his family fed.
And then one day he was shootin’ at some Jews,
And up through the sand came a bubblin’ crude.
Oil that is, Persian Perrier,
Kuwait Kool-aid,
Saudi Sodie.
"Schools compete for thousands of Saudi students"
Kansas State University is a STATE SCHOOL! You think the taxpayers of Kansas want their state university to compete for Saudi students?
As far as i am concerned 15,000 saudi students in America means 15,000 less seats in classrooms for Americans to sit in.
I know. I've read "Princess", "Princess Sultana's Daughters," and "Princess Sultana's Circle", by Jean Sasson and I've read enough about them to never want to date them or socialize with them in any way.
The bloody enemy doesn't need a Trojan Horse it's got a Crawford horses arse!
They told me that they viewed college life in America the way their fathers did: a. a chance to sow wild oats before married life back in the Kingdom and b. to get a degree that was actually worth something back in the Kingdom.
In other words, I was not surprised when I learned the 9/11 hijackers were largely educated in the west and spent their remaining moments in America at a strip club.
We're outsourcing American jobs to third world countries, we're keeping our borders open to all who want amnesty, we're bringing in millions of third world illegal immigrants as cheap labororers for our American businesses, we're lowering the public education standards so that the illegals anchor babies will have high school diplomas to hang on their walls, aren't these things to cheer about?
After all, IMO we did elect a "compassionate" President who is told us he was concerned with the global economies. He thinks the Muslim rug riders have a religion that represents peace. He wants to broaden the Hispanic family values into our American cultural society.
We got just what he said he was. No deceit on his part. Ignorance on ours maybe.
Maybe you and I are just being selfish in expressing our anger about the dumbing down of American citizenry.
It won't be very long before our national sovereignty will be just a memory us old timers once had. If the leaders have their way, our grandkids will be fine world citizens who believe will in more multiculturalism and political correctness than patriotism.
Keep your chin up.
15 out of 19.
Just an observation: many on the left say Bush is beholden to Israel. Kind of hard to be beholden to both Saudi Arabia AND Israel. It is important that we remain "allies" with SA. It is hard to believe, but it could be even worse. At least now, the royals are also hated by Osama. They know this, and help us somewhat, just like Pakistan (which also has jihadis in the govt - the ISI).
I abhor Saudi Arabia, but Bush has a tough job to do. Note that since 9/11 (and since the Iraq invasion) we still have had friendly relations with Arab govts, and they have been somewhat helpful in the WOT. They have also opened up a bit more to our ideas about elections etc. This program riles me too (esp that they get better deal than US citizens).
My alma mater - it turns my stomach.
It's not like these "students" are the top of the academic food chain, bringing distinction to any campus they grace with their presence.
If they ever do.
The FBI has already admitted they have lost a number of suspicious types they had been tracking.
We're simply going to have to face the fact that the federal government can no longer be trusted, if it ever could. Due to incompetence, "protect our turf" infighting, bumbling, and politically correct timidity, the federal government bungled 9/11, a fact which by now is obvious to nearly everybody despite Congress's best efforts to cover it up.
Politicians are not going to put a stop to the giveaway of our sovereignty. They're making plenty money on it.
Amen, sisters. Preach it! Spread the word!
If DD ever wanted to date one of them, the poor boy would have to deal with Daddy dearest.
One of the worst college teaching assistants I ever had was a Muslim guy. Just worthless. So, yes, I am biased.
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