Friday October 19, 2001

BOSTON - With little more than a mouse click, government officials, including the FBI, will soon be able to access personal information about international students attending school in the United States.

The Student Exchange Visitor Information System, a database developed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service that will centralize international student records from institutions of higher learning across the country, is being implemented this month at 12 schools in the Boston area, the Washington Post reported.

The program will be implemented at Boston University in about a year, when the software will be ready to handle the campus' large population of international students, said Greg Leonard, director of the International Students and Scholars Office.

"BU will probably be amongst the last schools to implement the database," Leonard said.

Expected to be nationwide by the end of 2003, Congress has provided initial funding for the program, which will be supported by a $95 registration fee collected from individuals applying for student visas.

The database contains the same information that international students are required to provide on INS Form I-20, including name and address, nationality, place of birth, degree program, date of commencement and academic status.

Leonard, who recently attended a conference in Charlotte, N.C., on the new technology, does not expect the implementation of SEVIS to affect research programs and academic life at BU.

"BU is a private school, and the fees are already so high that the chances of an additional $95 fee having a great influence on a student's decision to come to BU is not likely," Leonard said.

However, Leonard acknowledged some students on tighter budgets hoping to attend state schools with lower tuition may find the fee onerous.

"In addition to this, the way the INS is setting up the program is that it must be paid in (U.S. dollars) or with a credit card, which in some countries is not easily done," he said.

While Leonard said he acknowledged the U.S. government's right to know what and where students are studying, he also highlighted some of the program's disadvantages.

"It's unfortunate because it represents an impediment for international students. It raises the barriers for them to come to this country to study when what we should be doing is trying to lower them," Leonard said.

"International students make an enormous contribution to U.S. universities and colleges," he said.

According to Leonard, BU and other schools with large international student populations were deliberately excluded from the test group of schools because the technology cannot yet handle the volume of information.

More than half a million foreign students enter the United States on student visas each year, according to government reports. Until 1998, BU had the largest number of international students in the country, a title since usurped by New York University.

About 4,443 international students enrolled at BU last fall, Leonard said, but this year's number is expected to be slightly lower.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 authorized the creation of the database and includes a provision that schools need to include information on any disciplinary action taken against students who have been convicted of a crime.

The act was adopted after lawmakers learned that one of the men who assisstd in a car bombing under the World Trade Center in 1993 entered the United States on a student visa to study engineering at Wichita State University.

On the whole, BU international students did not seem to be worried about the additional surveillance and fee, which will most probably not be applied retroactively, Leonard said.

"If the government really feels that people entering the U.S. on student visas with the wrong intentions are a threat, then they should go about getting information about these people," said Niclas Bahn, a College of Arts and Sciences senior from Austria.

"I just hope my information will be kept safe and not be misused," he said.