Posted on 07/29/2003 1:12:58 PM PDT by chance33_98
Database to Monitor International Students Students Must Register Personal Data by Friday
Photo/Garrett Hubing International students must turn in registration paperwork at the SISS office, located in the International House.
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By REGINA CHEN Contributing Writer Tuesday, July 29, 2003
UC Berkeley international students must register personal information into a new government database spawned by the USA PATRIOT Act by this Friday or leave the country within 15 days.
Called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), the database expands monitoring of foreign students, providing instantly accessible electronic data to the federal government about international students, scholars and their dependents.
The database can be accessed by the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service, formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
SEVIS registration has two parts: a profile including a student's address, major and the duration of their visit, and then updates on events including a change of major or address.
UC Berkeley's Services for International Students and Scholars (SISS) is processing the SEVIS applications.
"We've become data-entry people for the federal system," said Ted Goode, Director of SISS.
UC Berkeley will contribute a total of about 8,000 entries to SEVIS—5,000 UC Berkeley students and scholars and about 3,000 of their dependents.
However, some students are concerned that if they withdraw from the university, they may be forced to leave the United States.
The "withdrawal" status is too broad, some students said. The category includes students who are on medical leave and students who are conducting research away from from the UC Berkeley campus.
"There's a third category, for grad students doing what they need to do to successfully complete their studies, whether it's library research in Paris or an archaeological dig in Ethiopia," Goode said.
To assist students with special circumstances, SISS has advisors to help them attain the proper paperwork so they can stay in the United States.
Also, SISS has worked with the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate committees to create policies for graduate students researching outside Berkeley.
The office has also voiced concerns to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service about what constitutes full-time enrollment.
"The challenge is to answer the question of how do you facilitate a grad student to accomplish research which is equivalent to a full course and how to embrace that under INS definition," Goode said.
The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service has told SISS that there is "sufficient flexibility to address the various circumstances."
Besides piling on paperwork for international students, some critics of the system said it may not prove effective in preventing terrorism.
"In reality, if anyone wants to do real harm, they just have to meet the requirements, make sure they are enrolled," said Gustavo Mata, an international student from Venezuela and ASUC academic affairs vice president.
SISS has not faced any budget cuts and has been able to accommodate the extra work mandated by the government.
Originally, a system to track foreign students was conceived from the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, but it was done through paperwork, Goode said.
It would typically take one to one and a half years for their data to be entered into a database.
The USA PATRIOT Act, born in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, called for a streamlining process to make records of foreign students more readily available to the federal government to prevent terrorism.
After they've registered all the current foreign students, so that their future work (only new students and changes of address/major) will be only a fraction of the current load, can we cut their budget?
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