Stopping Student Visas

[realtraveller]

Interesting news article on abc.com entitled "Stopping Student Visas". Senator Feinstein (D-California) is considering legislation that would curtail student visas for foreign students, construct a computerized tracking system on foreign students, have stricter background checks on them and/or prevent anyone from a "terrorist-sponsoring" country to get a student visa to the U. S.

Senator Feinstein is concerned that student from Iran or Iraq come here to study nuclear physics or biochemistry and then return to those terrorist nations and use the knowledge they learned here against us.

The universities apparently are more concerned with their potential loss of revenue from foreign students who don't usually use financial aid than national security.

Comments?

[amykhar]

I am surprised college revenues would be an issue. All of the colleges I have attended have a waiver in place for foreign students. All tuition was waived for any foreign student who qualified for admission.

They DID have to cover housing costs, and could not work to cover those.

Amy

[erik_kosberg]

Trying to stop the free flow of information is always popular in a country founded on the ideals of liberty.

[realtraveller]

Yes, the free flow of information.....

Isn't it wonderful that those hijackers got such excellent flight training here in the United States. The free flow of that information certainly guaranteed the liberty of the 6,000.

[poseidon]

Oh well that's par for the course for Ms. Feinstein. I'm curious, is she for banning foreign students based on how they look just like she's for banning certain guns based on how they look?

[jnbmoore]

Originally posted by amykhar
I am surprised college revenues would be an issue. All of the colleges I have attended have a waiver in place for foreign students. All tuition was waived for any foreign student who qualified for admission.

Wow -- I'll have to track these places down-- most of the colleges I've known of the foreign students got to pay out-of - state tution which is very very expensive.

I know students at RIT and UR now that had to save five -six years to come here. The ones that are sponsored by their company or parents were the ones most well off..

Bridgette

[realtraveller]

Originally posted by poseidon
Oh well that's par for the course for Ms. Feinstein. I'm curious, is she for banning foreign students based on how they look just like she's for banning certain guns based on how they look?

I detect a note of sarcasm here. She may just be grandstanding for the sake of appearing to be all in favor of preventing the entry of potential terrorists. She may ultimately drop it if she gets large contributions from educational institutions who don't want to see revenues slipping.

[kurt_messick]

There is a problem with reasoning like this. France encountered it when they instituted visa requires a few decades ago for those entering the country. They couldn't by treaty require visas of EEC member nationalities.

So, Americans and Canadians had to get visas.

Most Algerian terrorist-types (who they were hoping to keep out with these restrictions) simply forged a Greek passport and walked right in.

The problem is not in the student visa programme. It is with INS as a whole.

Besides, it is cheaper to get your nuclear physics instruction from a college in the former Soviet-block countries. And while overall their schools might not be the top-notch ones we've got, they still can produce graduates who can produce nuclear weapons.

[erik_kosberg]

Originally posted by realtraveller
Isn't it wonderful that those hijackers got such excellent flight training here in the United States. The free flow of that information certainly guaranteed the liberty of the 6,000.

And if they hadn’t gotten training here the attacks wouldn’t have occurred. We are after all the only place in the world where someone can learn to fly a plane. Brazilian cropdusters and North Korean fighter pilots can’t learn in their own countries so they all come here. Maybe we shouldn’t let people from other countries take NRA firearms safety classes. After all, they could learn to fire a gun. They sure couldn’t figure that out anywhere but in the US.

Feinstein’s proposal might give some people a false sense of security, but would do nothing at all to make it harder for foreign nationals to learn how to create chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Some chemical weapons are so easy to make that they require almost no training. How hard would it be for terrorists to obtain bleach or ammonia? Separately, they’re (relatively) safe liquids; combined, they’re a deadly poisonous gas. Anyone with a few semesters of undergraduate biology knows how to propogate germs and viruses. Even nuclear weapons aren’t that hard to construct provided that you can steal some enriched uranium or weapons grade plutonium (and the U.S. has done a lousy job of keeping track of it). Fusion bombs are extremely complex but a Hiroshima-type uranium gun bomb would not be that difficult to build. The design is so simple that it wasn’t even tested before dropping one on 6 August 1945 (the Nagasaki design, significantly more complex, was proven to work at the Trinity test).

Limiting foreign student visas would not provide any real safety. The knowledge needed to conduct terrorist operations can be learned elsewhere.

edited for a typo: trerorists --> terrorists

[hadassahchana[$]]

Feinstein's idea sounds great. I can think of an even better idea.

We can call it 'The Great Wall of The U.S.' We'll start a sponsor-a-brick program to pay for it. It could sort of be a monument to the Former United States.

Admittedly, we'll have to dispense with all of that nonsense about "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...", but then, who needs a bunch of tired poor people , anyway?



Cindy

[poseidon]

Originally posted by hadassahchana
Feinstein's idea sounds great. I can think of an even better idea.

We can call it 'The Great Wall of The U.S.' We'll start a sponsor-a-brick program to pay for it. It could sort of be a monument to the Former United States.

Admittedly, we'll have to dispense with all of that nonsense about "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...", but then, who needs a bunch of tired poor people , anyway?



Cindy

I git me one of them better idears. Since'm those French people gave us Lady Liberty, and them French people is the ones who write them words on the Lady, then why don't we just ship the bitch back?

[realtraveller]

If these more moderate ideas are not adopted and if another terrorist attack occurs, the mood of the country will be such that I'm afraid we'll be hearing in January, 2005:

"I, Patrick J. Buchanan, do solemnly swear..."

[amykhar]

Originally posted by poseidon


I git me one of them better idears. Since'm those French people gave us Lady Liberty, and them French people is the ones who write them words on the Lady, then why don't we just ship the bitch back?

ROFLMAO

[kuuleimomi]

Originally posted by kurt_messick
Besides, it is cheaper to get your nuclear physics instruction from a college in the former Soviet-block countries. And while overall their schools might not be the top-notch ones we've got, they still can produce graduates who can produce nuclear weapons.

It's no pride in me, but the facts: St. Petersburg State Technical University is one of the best technical schools in the world [I've read that somewhere]. We've got bunch of people from Iran [and other countries, doubt Afghanistan though, but Saudi Arabia for sure] there. Don't think they will ban those students in Russia, though. Democracy, err? Liberty?

On the whole point of the duscussion: you can't tell what a motive of every single student entering the country is. What if my friend Mike went to the States, majored in Computer Science, came back and then was among those Russian kids who hacked Pentagon back in 1999? Not every single Arab dream of destroying the United States [some of them dream of destroying other parts of the world, sorry, jk].

Finn

[hadassahchana[$]]

If these more moderate ideas are not adopted and if another terrorist attack occurs, the mood of the country will be such that I'm afraid we'll be hearing in January, 2005:

"I, Patrick J. Buchanan, do solemnly swear..."

Um, I must have missed the 'more moderate' ideas in this thread.

I hardly think that closing the universities in the US to foreigners is a moderate proposal. Also, I want to point out that many countries where terrorists have attacked civilians have not veered sharply to the right. Becoming more and more xenophobic is not going to solve this.


Cindy

[realtraveller]

I don't think Senator Feinstein is proposing eliminating all student visas for foreigners. Her proposal is to track the holders of student visas, do background checks, and not permit students from nations that sponsor terrorism to enter.

The only idea more "moderate" is to do nothing different at all.

Nations do not become more liberal (in the usual sense of that word) when their citizens feel that the government is not doing enough to protect their lives. Instead they vote for the strictest law and order candidate on the ballot.

[frazzledspice]

With distance learning widely available at campuses throughout the United States, I don't think we are depriving foreign students of the possibility of getting an education if we deprive them of student visas.

Let them take their first thirty credits as distance learners. If they earn good grades and show that they are dedicated to the pursuit of learning, then they can be considered for student visas.

[Redlass]

Isn't it wonderful that those hijackers got such excellent flight training here in the United States.

Yes, frankly, it is wonderful. It's a point in our favor, not a strike against us.

Open education has always been one of the better ideas of our country. The fact that people abuse education does not make education bad.

And if we believe an educated society is good for us, wouldn't it benefit us even more to have the rest of society educated? And I'd much rather have the students here in the U.S. than taking distance education. A college campus has the potential to be a life-changing environment. That is what it is designed to do. Not everyone leaves with a broader mind, but some do. I'd like to think that at least some of the students who come here leave with a better understanding of the United States--whether they like what they understand or not.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Originally posted by frazzledspice
Let them take their first thirty credits as distance learners. If they earn good grades and show that they are dedicated to the pursuit of learning, then they can be considered for student visas.

What do grades have to do with it? Being a good student and being a terrorist aren't mutually exclusive. The number 2 guy in Al Qaeda (some think he's actually the number 1 guy, with bin Laden being more of a symbol and a spokesman) was a medical student -- so presumably no slouch in the academics department -- when he first became involved with terrorist groups. Atta, the mastermind of the WTC attacks, was writing his thesis and by all accounts was a good student at the time he first became involved with terrorism.

One other aspect of this (and here I'm agreeing with what Redlass just wrote about college campuses and life-changing experiences) is that a suprising number of world leaders have gotten at least some of their education here. That's no guarantee that they'll always be on our side, but that does give them personal ties to the U.S. and, assuming their experience wasn't totally horrible, that may give them a life-long affection for the U.S. If we cut off all student visas from certain countries, then we're not developing that for the future.

[KateTPZ]

Politicians sure know how to get attention, don't they?! Not a reasonable proposal, but it'll get lots of attention.

[realtraveller]

I'm going to date myself here but...when I was in law school living in married student housing, my next door neighbors were Iranians. The wife wore the coverings. Nothing unusual there except that this was during the Iranian hostage crisis.

This family had a huge poster of the Ayatollah Khomeini on their wall (which wasn't being used for a dartboard). And no I wasn't peeking in, the poster was prominently displayed.

The families children played outside my door and I was always friendly to them. I'd say "hello" to the wife, she never responded.

I always wondered why, in the heartland of America, these people continued to revere the Ayatollah. Here was a man that called the United States "The Great Satan" and who was holding Americans hostage.

They apparently didn't see the irony that if they were in Iran and had put up a poster of President Carter they would have been shot.

The 9/11 hijackers had been in this country for several years. From all I have read and heard, they were treated with all due respect, they had contacts with Americans who trained them in flying, trained them in gymnasiums, rented them cars and motel rooms, served them in restaurants and bars etc. The group in San Diego attended the local mosque, visited the zoo and took classes at a local college. They saw our way of life, they partook of our way of life and yet they sought to destroy it.

I see nothing wrong or xenophobic on doing background checks on students applying for visas or in tracking them and making sure they are in fact going to school once they are here. This needs to be part of a wide-ranging house-cleaning of INS policies and procedures.

[KateTPZ]

Originally posted by realtraveller
I see nothing wrong or xenophobic on doing background checks on students applying for visas or in tracking them and making sure they are in fact going to school once they are here. This needs to be part of a wide-ranging house-cleaning of INS policies and procedures.

I agree INS needs serious improvements and I have no objection to background checks on visa applicants and perhaps monitoring of visa holders in this country. What I object to is wholesale discrimination against applicants from particular locations, or particular ethnic or religious backgrounds. I don't know what an ideal system would be - and I'm glad it's not up to me - but I'm certain prejudice, bigotry and discrimination have no valid part in it.

[hadassahchana[$]]

The only idea more "moderate" is to do nothing different at all.

In your initial post, you said that the proposal was to ban all foreign students, to eliminate student visas to people from certain countries. That is not a moderate idea.

However, to come back with the notion that 'to do nothing' is the only alternative is just absurd. There is a huge difference between doing everything the way it's being done currently, and eliminating student visas.

The INS definitely needs overhauling- as it has since the Shah was overthrown. I don't know if you remember, but at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis, President Carter asked the INS for a list of the names and addresses of all Iranian students in our country, and of course they couldn't do it. They've had over 20 years to correct this problem, yet absolutely nothing had been done about it. I have heard that even when the holders of green cards turn in their registration forms (as they must do every six months) , the forms are sent to Washington- and thrown out. I head it from an Immigration Officer, not just a random rumour. The INS is not computerized (can you imagine? ) and doesn't even attempt to keep track of those who have been issued visas or green cards.

Cindy