Free Republic

(Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers Hani Hanhour (right) and Majed Moqed (left) at an ATM machine on Sept. 5, 2001.) (CNSNews.com) - The number of Saudi Arabian students in the United States has increased by more than 500 percent since Sept. 11, 2001--when Hani Hanjour, a Saudi national who came here on a student visa flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 189 people. According to the Institute of International Education--whose numbers on foreign students in the United States are used in official reports published by the U.S. Department of Education--there were 5,579 Saudi nationals enrolled in U.S....

The Saudi national who was initially detained and then ruled out as a suspect in the Boston Marathon terrorist attack had been flagged on a terror watch list and was granted a student visa without being properly vetted, sources have told me. A source close to the investigation revealed that Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi had been deemed inadmissible under the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act which declares ineligible for a visa – any alien who is engaged in or is likely to engage after entry – in terrorist activity. At least two additional sources have confirmed to me...

Foreign Students Walk Off Hershey’s Factory Job In Protest By Liz GoodwinAugust 18, 2011 Hundreds of foreign students on a State Department cultural exchange visa program walked off their factory jobs in protest on Wednesday. The J-1 visa program brings foreign students to the country to work for two months and learn English, and was designed in part to fill seasonal tourism jobs at resorts and seaside towns. The 400 students employed at a Pennsylvania factory that makes Hershey's candies told The New York Times that even though they make $8.35 an hour, their rent and program fees are deducted...

U.S. students had a much harder time getting into American graduate schools this past year than did their peers from China and the rest of the world. And while 1 year is far from a trend, a new report by the Council of Graduate Schools raises the question of how well Americans stack up against international students. Overall, the report says, 3% more international students received offers of admission for the 2010–11 academic year than in the previous year. That's the fifth increase in the past 6 years. But the survey from the Washington, D.C.,–based organization also found that 1%...

Chinese Returnees Bethany Stotts, April 23, 2010 Speakers at a recent Brookings Institution forum on Chinese returnees debated the impact that study abroad experiences will have on China’s political and social development. Around 1.6 million Chinese citizens have studied abroad or finished a fellowship at least a year in duration since 1978, said the panelists. About a half million have since returned, said Cheng Li, Director of Research at Brookings’ John L. Thornton China Center, citing data from the Chinese Embassy. “Those who study for four months or half a year are not counted” in this analysis, he noted, according...

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - The Nigerian suspected of trying to bring down a U.S. airliner with explosives might have used Arabic studies as a pretext for entering Yemen before disappearing for months, perhaps into one of the lawless country's al-Qaida strongholds, fellow students and teachers said. Interviews with staff and students at the Institute for the Arabic Language this week have revealed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was frequently absent from classes and spent at most one month at the school in Yemen's capital, San'a, starting in late August before vanishing. Authorities say he didn't leave the country until December and...

LANTANA, Fla. – It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just for him....

LANTANA, Fla. (Dec. 27) - It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just...

LANTANA, Florida — It started with a cough, a cool-season hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just for him....

Iraq Plans to Send 10,000 Students to Colleges in U.S., Abroad July 25, 2009 WASHINGTON — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says his country plans to send up to 10,000 Iraqi students a year to colleges in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia over the next five years as a part of a new scholarship program. Al-Maliki says stability in Iraq has allowed the country to focus on education after years of war. He says there's great ambition behind the new program "because our needs are great." The Iraqi government is funding the scholarship program. It will allow students...

One of the most significant transformations in U.S. graduate education and the international market for highly-trained workers in science and engineering during the last quarter century is the representation of students from outside of the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. In all but the life sciences, the foreign share of Ph.D. recipients now equals or exceeds the share from the United States. Students from outside the United States accounted for 51 percent of Ph.D. recipients in science and engineering in 2003, up from 27 percent in 1973. In 2003, doctorate recipients from outside the...

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. (AP) SNIPPET: "Each time he looked up, Cox said, Zhu was on top of Yang, who was on the floor. Zhu stared at Yang's face as he cut through her neck, Cox said. "It wasn't really an angry face at all," said Cox, at that point the only witness to the gruesome events. "It was just a really blank, determined look." By the time police arrived, Zhu was holding the woman's head in his hand, an officer testified."

BLACKSBURG -- Virginia Tech police on Thursday released gruesome details of a killing in a campus cafe, as students wondered why a campus that went two decades without a murder before the April 16, 2007, shootings has become the site of so much tragedy. When police arrived Wednesday night at Au Bon Pain inside the Virginia Tech Graduate Life Center, they found a decapitated female victim who had arrived on campus just two weeks ago and a young man they have now charged with killing her. The events have shocked a campus still coping with the 2007 shootings of 32...

I went to a PUMA site and found this mentioned. The poster claimed he had a scholorship that was given only to foreign students. Hmmm Barack Obama from Africa Scholarship winner; Phi Beta Kappa; portraits Neg# A62-00099 For more see post #19 here: http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/hey-eeyores-another-take-on-those-polls/

America continues to grow in stature as the most-favoured destination for Indian students with the last seven months showing a 38% increase in the number of candidates going there. What's more, Chennai seems to be one of the largest exporters in the country. Sample this: 38,274 student visas were issued from across the country in fiscal year 2006-07 (October 2006 to September 2007), of which the Chennai consulate gave out 19,973. Correspondingly, between October 2007 and April 2008, 50,316 student visas were issued from across the country, of which the Chennai consulate alone accounted for 24,975. With a rising middle...

Foreign Students Do Not Help with the Balance of Payments WASHINGTON (May 2008) – Lobbying groups frequently claim that foreign students are a benefit to America’s balance of payments, comparable to a booming export sector. For instance, the Institute for International Education (IIE) asserts that foreign students contributed a net $14.5 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2006-07 school year by paying for tuition and living expenses with resources from abroad, representing a net inflow of nearly $25,000 per year, every year, from the average foreign student. To assess these claims, the Center for Immigration Studies has published a...

Kingdom Come [Kathryn Jean Lopez] From the Arab News: Al-JOUF, 10 April 2008 — US Ambassador Ford Fraker said in Sakaka that his country aims to double the number of student visas issued to Saudis. “Currently there are 15,000 Saudi students in the US,” he said during an event on Sunday with local business leaders to an audience at the Al-Jouf Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “We aim to increase their numbers to 30,000 over the next five years.” Fraker said Saudi Arabia should bolster its English-language programs because it is generally required for Saudis seeking to pursue higher studies...

US Ambassador Ford Fraker said in Sakaka that his country aims to double the number of student visas issued to Saudis. “Currently there are 15,000 Saudi students in the US,” he said during an event on Sunday with local business leaders to an audience at the Al-Jouf Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “We aim to increase their numbers to 30,000 over the next five years.” Fraker said Saudi Arabia should bolster its English-language programs because it is generally required for Saudis seeking to pursue higher studies in the US. Fraker also stressed the need for popularizing English teaching programs because...

SPRINGFIELD, Tenn. - The Robertson County school district faces some problems Friday morning after a recent crackdown on illegal immigration. The illegal immigration crackdown led to the vanishing of 11 percent of Hispanic students. The district has been under state watch for failing to educate pockets of students, which includes non-English speakers. Now of the 768 Hispanic students, 60 have formally withdrawn and another 25 to 30 can't be accounted for. Public schools are required by a U.S Supreme Court decision to educate all students - regardless of their immigration status. If the missing students don't return soon, they will...

BATON ROUGE, La. — Two students were found shot to death in a home invasion at a Louisiana State University apartment, and officials decided to keep the campus open Friday while police searched for three suspects. The victims, Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, both doctorate students from India, were found inside an apartment at the Edward Gay complex late Thursday night after authorities received an emergency call. Police patrols were increased on the 30,000-student campus Friday and students were told to be cautious, but the university was not locked down. Students were taking the last of their final...