Clinton Proposes More Visas for High-Tech Workers
House Republicans Object to Plan Easing Standard for Illegal Immigrants to Apply for Residence
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton offered a plan yesterday for expanding a visa program for foreigners with high-tech skills, but leading Republicans criticized the proposal as pandering to illegal immigrants. The high-tech industry says there are not enough Americans to fill all the available jobs and has urgently been pushing Congress to boost the number of visas. Clinton wants to distribute an extra 362,500 visas during the next three years and quadruple fees collected to create a training and education program for U.S. workers. He also would require that up to half the foreigners hold master's degrees or above to ensure U.S. companies get people with the highest skills. "We feel that this is a balanced proposal that is drawn on the best ideas that have been put forward," said Gene Sperling, a Clinton aide and director of the National Economic Council.
Clinton's proposal also would change immigration policies governing Central Americans and illegal aliens, a move Republicans say is unnecessary and places the visa increase in jeopardy. "I just don't see this as helpful," said Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.) a sponsor of one of several competing visa bills. "I've got to say I'm a little disappointed that the White House is appearing to try and weaken this legislation that is designed to improve our nation's work force."
H-1B visas are given to foreigners with college degrees and allow them to work in the United States for up to six years. The number of visas is capped at 115,000 this year but is scheduled to fall to 107,500 next year and 65,000 per year after that. High-tech industry officials say at least 300,000 jobs are going unfilled for lack of qualified U.S. applicants. Labor unions contend the industry is looking overseas chiefly to hold down wages.
Clinton's proposal would set a cap of 200,000 visas a year for three years, with 10,000 designated each year for research and higher education. He would boost the $500 fee for visas to $2,000 for most companies and $3,000 for companies that depend on foreigners for at least 15 percent of their work forces. Half the extra money would pay for training U.S. workers, 30 percent would pay for educating U.S. workers, and 20 percent would pay for improving the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Two other Clinton suggestions deal with immigration policy beyond H-1B visas. Currently, Nicaraguans and Cubans who apply for adjustment of their immigration status are given preference over nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Haiti because of the political climate in those two countries. Clinton proposed to treat immigrants from all of those
countries the same. Also, Clinton proposed to move up the date that qualifies long-term illegal immigrants for legal residence. Currently, only immigrants who arrived before 1972 could apply for legal status. Clinton wants to move the date to 1986, allowing many more immigrants to gain legal standing.
When the House Judiciary Committee cobbled together a compromise visa bill this week, Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) refused to consider the immigration proposals. The measure removed the cap for H-1B visas and increased the visa fee by only $150. "The Clinton administration turned its back on American workers and pandered to illegal aliens," said Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Tex.), head of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration.
High-tech industry officials are pleased Clinton wants to increase the visas but are disappointed by the dramatically higher fees. "That's a bit of a concern," said Bob Cohen, senior vice president of the Information Technology Association of America.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For more information on Clinton's visa proposal see:
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0511-176.html
Much-needed Foreigners Increasingly Turned Away
By Tom Hundley and Ray Moseley
Chicago Tribune
ROME -- The ramshackle San Lorenzo quarter in Italy's capital seems to exist in a kind of 1960s time warp. At the local social club, pictures of Che Guevara, Eldridge Cleaver and Ho Chi Minh are framed behind the bar. Posters on the walls outside rail against capitalism, and working-class San Lorenzo remains a bastion of the feisty Italian Communist Party. It's the last place you would expect bourgeois hostility toward huddled masses of immigrants. Yet last month, four young men from the neighborhood tried to set fire to a pedestrian underpass where three homeless immigrants were seeking shelter. A few days later, in a small town outside Milan, six undocumented Romanian immigrants working on a construction site complained about their low wages and the high price they were being charged to share a one-room apartment. Their boss settled matters by dousing one with gasoline and setting him on fire.
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,ART-44704,00.html
Watchdog or Attack Dog?
Critics say BCIS' internal affairs unit too often sinks its teeth into whistle-blowers instead of chasing actual misconduct
By Joe Cantlupe
San Diego Union Tribune
WASHINGTON -- San Diego Border Patrol Agent Joe Dassaro has no use for the USCIS Office of Internal Audit. He doesn't hesitate to reach for hyperbole to express his disdain. "It's the commissioner's Gestapo," said Dassaro, a San Diego union official of the National Border Patrol Council, which once was targeted by the USCIS internal affairs investigators for running a Web site that lambasted the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Not so, say top USCIS officials. They contend the 7-year-old USCIS Office of Internal Audit, the 68-member unit that examines allegations of misconduct inside the agency, is one of the top weapons the agency has to thwart growing concerns about wrongdoing in a burgeoning, multibillion-dollar agency.
http://www.uniontribune.com/news/uniontrib/sun/news/news_1n7probe.html
Chinese Students Flock to U.S., Rarely Return
By Michael Dorgan
San Jose Mercury News
BEIJING -- Yang Zhen, one of tens of thousands of Chinese who are hoping to win admission to a U.S. university this spring, insists that he'll return home after he graduates. ``I am the only child in my family,'' said the earnest 25-year-old, who hopes to study business administration or international relations. If Yang does return to China, he'll be one of a tiny minority. China sends
more students to the United States than any other country -- more than 50,000 last year. And although all of them assure U.S. State Department visa officers here that they'll go home after they finish school, as many as 99 percent look for jobs in America instead. Some qualify for special visas for high-tech fields. Some marry Americans. Some simply disappear. ``Once they're in the U.S., they're pretty much free to do what they want to do,'' concedes Charles Bennett, the chief of visa services at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/china-visa08.htm
Fleeing Poverty, Finding Slavery
Second of two parts
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Philadelphia Inquirer
VLORA, Albania - Anna Melnic was sold for $1,000. She was hustled out of her native Moldova on a train. She woke up in Romania. She was beaten, raped, and driven across Yugoslavia. In the foothills of Albania, she was passed to a pimp, ending up in this port city, where she jumped off a fourth-floor balcony trying to escape her next fate, a smuggler's boat bound for Italy.
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/2000/May/12/front_page/SMUGGLE12.htm
Hispanic Agents' Inner Struggle: Who They Are, What They Do a Dilemma
By Tessie Borden
The Arizona Republic
DOUGLAS - For some U.S. Border Patrol agents, it's a source of pride. For others, it's an inside joke. And for still others, it's a dirty little secret. That's the kind of tug-of-war that Hispanic agents, some of them naturalized U.S. citizens, face every day: a covert conflict between who they are and what they do. About a third of the 8,300 Border Patrol agents on the force are of Hispanic origin. That's the highest percentage of any federal law-enforcement or civilian agency, said Rob Daniels, Border Patrol spokesman in Tucson.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/0515hire.shtml
Quiet Force Behind Economic Boom: Immigrants
By David R. Francis
The Christian Science Monitor
The Federal Reserve's task of keeping inflation under control has been greatly eased by, guess what? Immigrants. In the past decade, at least 10 million immigrants have entered the United States. Most sought work, easing any labor shortages. "Wages would be much higher today if we didn't have immigrants," says George Borjas, an economist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/05/15/text/p13s1.html
USCIS Agent Accused of Ransom Scam
Crime: L.A. man helped free detained immigrants and send them to kin for money, FBI says.
By David Rosenzweig
Los Angeles Times
A Los Angeles USCIS agent was accused Thursday of collaborating with a convicted drug dealer to free illegal immigrants from federal custody and ransom them to their relatives in the United States. Jesse Gardona, a 15-year veteran of the Immigration and Naturalization Service assigned to the anti-smuggling squad, was indicted on federal charges of conspiracy, bribery, graft, and transporting and harboring illegal aliens. Also charged were Jose Quintanilla Guzman, described by an FBI agent as a Mexican drug trafficker who ran an auto body shop in East Los Angeles, and
Quintanilla's girlfriend, Leticia Chavez.
http://www.latimes.com/communities/news/los_angeles_metro/20000519/t000047292.html
Committee To Address Bill Eliminating H-1B Cap
by Juliana Gruenwald
National Journal Technology Daily
The House Judiciary Committee is expected to take up a controversial bill on Tuesday that would temporarily eliminate the cap on H-1B visas but includes restrictions opposed by high-tech companies, which favor a bipartisan competing bill.
The legislation, H.R. 4227, sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-TX, would eliminate the cap on H-1B visas, which allow skilled foreign workers to stay in the United States for up to six years, through 2002 and includes several worker protection and anti-fraud provisions. The provisions include language that would prevent companies, beginning in 2001, from using the additional visas provided by the bill unless employers have increased the number of U.S. workers and their compensation in the previous year. It also requires companies to pay H-1B holders at least $40,000 a year, a measure aimed at ensuring the visas aren't used to bring in cheaper foreign labor.
The measure moves closer to industry's position than the first bill, H.R. 3814, Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's immigration panel, introduced earlier this year. But business interests still oppose H.R. 4227, approved last month by Smith's subcommittee, because of therestrictions attached to the additional visas.
They prefer a bill, H.R. 3983, sponsored by Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-CA, that would increase the cap to 200,000 from 2000-2003 and has broad bipartisan support. The current cap for this year is 115,000 visas. During Tuesday's markup, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-CA, H.R. 3983's chief co-sponsor, may offer a version of that bill as a substitute amendment.
Some Democrats have grown increasingly wary that the GOP leadership may be reluctant to snub Smith by moving the Dreier-Lofgren bill instead of his even though H.R. 3983 has more support. The bill has 60 bipartisan co-sponsors compared with the two Republican ones on H.R. 4227. But Rep. Tom Davis, R-VA, a member of the GOP leadership active on high-tech issues, said Thursday that many of the restrictions opposed by industry in Smith's bill "will come off" at some point in the process. But he said the bill will have to retain some anti-fraud and worker protection measures.
"This is not a popular bill with the public," Davis said. "It's popular with the CEOs." A spokesman for Smith said his boss has been meeting with House members and others this week to discuss his bill but would not say whether he may would make changes to the measure.
Cuban-American Foundation Has Deep Pockets, D.C. Clout
By Marcus Stern
San Diego Union Tribune
WASHINGTON -- If the Elián González spectacle playing out in Miami in recent months were a Broadway play, the Cuban American National Foundation would be its chief producer, director and underwriter. Behind the gripping global melodrama are the long arms and deep pockets of the Miami-based, hard-line, anti-Castro organization -- which has bought influence, intimidated opponents and cajoled Washington for two decades. "The Cold War is not over," insisted Jose Cardenas, head of the nonprofit organization's Washington office. The foundation and its large army of wealthy Cuban-American patrons have made possible gestures like the reported offer to Elián's father, Juan Miguel González, of $2 million if he would defect.
http://www.uniontrib.com/news/uniontrib/sat/news/news_1n29cubans.html
Border War on Crime Overwhelms Courtrooms+Law: Influx of cases from crackdown on drugs and illegal immigration pushes U.S. Southwest's legal system to the breaking point. Too few jails and personnel make the threat of violence a constant concern.
By Richard A. Serrano
Los Angeles Times
McALLEN, Texas--Six years ago, Washington poured millions of dollars into expanding federal law enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border. The goal was to reduce crime, cut drug trafficking and stem the flow of illegal immigrants. But today, while an army of new federal agents has sent arrest rates soaring, the legal system that must prosecute, judge and sentence those taken into custody is on the verge of collapse. Once-sleepy court districts from South Texas to Southern California have been transformed into stark scenes of assembly-line justice, where inmates by the busload are carted into crowded courtrooms and overwhelmed court officials move them through a system that is stretched as thin as the fence that divides the two countries. Though the border campaign was ballyhooed as a major crackdown on crime, the result often falls far short of effective law enforcement and traditional American standards of justice. "We've been working with Band-Aids, trying to adjust to this gigantic increase in volume," said Chief U.S. District Judge Marilyn L. Huff in San Diego. The result is scenes that sometimes resemble Third World courts, endangering inmates and public safety, she and other judges said. Evidence of a system in distress is everywhere.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20000430/t000040679.html
No Kid Gloves: Minors Held for Months in Detention and Deported
By Eric Herman
New York Daily News
While Elian Gonzalez frolics at the luxurious Wye River Plantation in Maryland with his schoolmates from Cuba, thousands of undocumented immigrant children like Thushyanthi Armuainayagam, 15, Mekabou Fofana, 16, and Asata and Abou Jalloh, 9 and 5, are getting less-than-royal treatment at the hands of the federal government. They are among the many children who often arrive in the United States unaccompanied by mothers, fathers or relatives. The Immigration and Naturalization Service sends many of them back home. They come from all corners of the world. Of the 4,607 taken into custody last year across the nation, the greatest number, 1,055, came from Honduras. "There are more and more unaccompanied minors coming into this country, and they pose a very serious problem for the BCIS," says Peter Kwong, chairman of the Asian-American studies department at Hunter College. The biggest problem is what to do with those who, like Elian, apply for asylum, custody or other special legal status. The agency maintains East Coast facilities for children in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Florida. Many kids who enter the country through New York are sent to the Berks County Youth Center in Leesport, Pa., a former nursing home that houses 35 undocumented immigrant children.
http://www.nydailynews.com/2000-04-30/News_and_Views/Beyond_the_City/a-65052.asp?last6days=1
Republicans Back Away From Their Indignation Over Seizure of Cuban Boy
By Lizette Alvarez
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 2 -- After a barrage of fiery talk critical of the Justice Department's raid to retrieve Elián González, Senate and House Republicans are distancing themselves from the case, no longer sure that hearings are warranted. Descriptions of "jack-booted thugs" and "storm troopers" have been all but muted in the last few days, replaced by a cautious call for answers, maybe even just written ones, from the Justice Department about its decision to send heavily armed agents into a private home. While several prominent Republicans, including Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader, still want to publicly delve into the Elián case, many others have come to realize that doing so could be a grand political miscalculation. Those Republicans, ranging from conservative to moderate, have helped tone down the rhetoric surrounding the Justice Department's raid on the Miami house of Elián's great-uncle, Lázaro González.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/050300cuba-boy-repubs.html
U.S. Believes Beijing Is Behind Human Smuggling
Andrew Mitrovica and Paul Koring
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Toronto and Washington -- The U.S. Justice Department is expected to arrest three Canadians today for allegedly conspiring to smuggle thousands of migrants to North America, law-enforcement sources say. A five-month Justice Department probe, code named Project Squeeze Play, may also implicate key Chinese officials, including government personnel and a senior army general in China's Fujian province, the sources said. The Justice Department believes the investigation reveals that the lucrative human-smuggling trade from China to North America is sanctioned by the Beijing government, the sources said. "The Chinese officials are running the show," a source said. "It's just not about one corrupt general; the Chinese government is doing it."
A U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service official confirmed that senior representatives from the Justice Department and the USCIS in Washington planned to hold a news conference in Detroit today. The purpose of the event is to announce both the arrests and possible indictments against the Chinese general and others involved. But when senior USCIS officials became aware that news of the arrests had leaked, they decided to cancel the news conference. Carol Jennifer, director of immigration in Michigan, confirmed there is an "ongoing investigation" but refused to confirm or deny any details outlined by The Globe and Mail.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/TopNational/20000503/USMUGM.html
Lawmakers Split on Migrant Workers
By Jesse J. Holland
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Allowing hundreds of thousands of illegal foreign migrant workers to remain in the United States legally would be better than allowing the abuse the workers endure now, lawmakers say. "They are raped, they are robbed, they are bribed, they are pillaged in a way that (is) unthinkable, and ought to be unthinkable, in this country," Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration Wednesday. "It happens because they have no safe and legal way to come here and to go home." Under the bill introduced by Smith and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., undocumented workers who can prove they worked at least 150 days as agricultural laborers within the past year could immediately gain legal status as temporary nonimmigrants. Those who do farm work for at least 180 days annually in five of the next seven years would be eligible to apply for legal permanent residence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000504/aponline183545_000.htm
EDITOR'S NOTE: More information on the Senate committee hearing (including testimony) is online at: http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/wl542000.htm
Bush Opposes Amnesty Plan
Stumping in O.C., the presumptive GOP nominee says he doesn't think stand will hurt him with
Hispanics.
By Martin Wisckol
The Orange County Register
Democrats' call for a new immigration amnesty program is a bad idea, George W. Bush said Thursday, brushing aside questions that his position could hurt his effort to attract more Hispanic voters to Republican candidates. Indeed, several Hispanics on hand for the presidential candidate's visit to downtown Santa Ana later in the day said they were far more likely to vote for Bush than any other recent GOP presidential nominee. "I know we need to reform immigration,'' Bush said in an interview with the Register. "But at this point I don't support blanket amnesty. I don't think it will help us meet our goals.''
http://www.ocregister.com/news/bush005cci3.shtml
German 'Green Cards' Criticized
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- An agreement on Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's plans for a U.S.-style ``green card'' system intended to open borders to foreign high-tech experts came under scrutiny Wednesday, with economists saying it doesn't go far enough to entice workers. Restrictions on who qualifies for work permits are so tight, economists said, that even Bill Gates would be barred because he is a college dropout. At the same time, a five-year limit on how long they can stay in the country could also keep workers from ever feeling at home in Germany. The plan, which could bring in up to 20,000 workers from Eastern Europe and India, has been praised by German high-tech businesses who have pushed Schroeder to help them keep pace with U.S.-based rivals who routinely poach workers from overseas. ``It's a step in the right direction,'' said Heidi Sherman, chief economist with the Munich-based economic institute Ifo. ``But it's still on an experimental level. We still have to see who will want to come to Germany and how many will apply. There are a lot of question marks surrounding this.'' The conservative Christian Democrats have loudly opposed the plan, arguing it would be better to promote education rather than bring in foreign workers. To make the point, the party's candidate for governor in North Rhine-Westphalia state has campaigned under the controversial slogan ``Kinder statt Inder,'' or ``Children instead of Indians.''
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Germany-Green-Cards.html
Chinese Families Pay Big Money for U.S. Student Visas
By Michael Dorgan
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
BEIJING -- Yang Zhen, one of tens of thousands of Chinese who are hoping to win admission to a U.S. university this spring, insists that he'll return home after he graduates. "I am the only child in my family," said the earnest 25-year-old, who hopes to study business administration or international relations.
If Yang does return to China, he'll be one of a tiny minority. China sends more students to the United States than any other country _ more than 50,000 last year. And although all of them assure State Department visa officers here that they'll go home after they finish school, as many as 99 percent look for jobs in America instead.
Some qualify for special visas for high-tech fields. Some marry Americans. Some simplydisappear. "Once they're in the U.S., they're pretty much free to do what they want to do," concedes Charles Bennett, the chief of visa services at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
The impact of China's massive and unofficial immigration on the United States depends on one's point of view. For high-tech companies, it's a boon. For colleges and universities, it's a source of world-class scholars. For other applicants, particularly to top graduate science programs, it means tougher competition.
For China, the defection of top scholars to U.S. schools and employers is a worrisome brain drain. "It's well-known in the society that the first-class students go abroad," said a professor at the International and Comparative Education Institute of Beijing Normal University, speaking on the condition that he not be identified. "The second-class students go to joint ventures (in China, with foreign companies), and the worst students go to the state-owned enterprises," he said. "It's a big loss to the country."
Luring the brainpower home won't be easy. Enhanced personal freedom aside, the economic argument for staying in the United States is compelling. Top pay for a senior engineer at China's largest software company is 80,000 yuan a year, or about $9,780. The same engineer can make 10 times that in California's Silicon Valley.
While it is possible to live more cheaply in Beijing, China's cost of living approaches California's when the comparison entails a Western-style basket of goods and services, according to figures provided by HR International, a human resources consulting firm based in Waltham, Mass.
Bottom line: The return rate for Chinese students in the United States is so low it that could be used as an argument for reducing the number of visas granted, said a former U.S. visa official here, who asked not to be identified.
She noted that the nearly 50-year-old law guiding U.S. visa policy says non-immigration visas should not be granted if the interviewing officer suspects that the applicant does not intend to return to his or her home country.
"An honest evaluation would virtually end visa issuance (to Chinese applicants)," she said. Indeed, the very "eagerness and desperation" that many applicants show would be evidence against granting them visas.
Foreign-educated Chinese who do return, including many high-tech entrepreneurs, are westernizing China at its highest levels.
More than half the presidents and vice presidents of the 44 colleges under China's Ministry of Education have studied overseas. A recent survey of the country's top five universities found that 70 percent of their students planned to study abroad, most of them in America.
So keen are Chinese students to get into U.S. schools _ or at least into the United States _ that a cottage industry has sprung up to help them.
Special schools prepare students to meet the English language requirements. Consultants help fill out applications to universities and prep candidates for their interviews with U.S. Embassy visa officers.
"We can provide service to all types of people, from (prep school students) to graduate students, who want to study in America," said Lucy Liu of the Weilian International Co. in Beijing. "There are lots of U.S. schools that have relations with our company. The charge ... will range from 10,000 yuan to 70,000 ($1,200 to $8,500), depending on the type of service you need."
For fees of up to $10,000, some consultants will create phony letters of recommendation and false evidence of economic support. Some even provide professional actors or actresses to stand in for applicants in their brief but crucial interviews with visa officers, said William Lesh, the anti-fraud officer at the U.S. Embassy here.
Once in the United States, some Chinese visitors may be undertaking another kind of fraud. U.S. counterintelligence officials say some Chinese students, especially in physics, computer science and other high-tech disciplines, are actually Chinese spies, and that some real students are ordered to report what they learn about U.S. high-tech research to the Chinese government.
A commission on Chinese espionage chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., reached a similar conclusion last May. A headline in the third unclassified chapter of the commission's 872-page report noted that "(Chinese) Students Have U.S. Citizen-Like Access to High Performance Computers at the National Weapons Laboratories."
Without more specifics, the report said "threats to national security can come from (Chinese) scientists, students, business people or bureaucrats" in addition to professional spies.
Despite these suspected side effects and strained U.S.-Chinese relations, the flow of Chinese students to the United States _ many of them related to senior government and party officials _ appears to be growing.
During the past academic year, 51,001 Chinese nationals studied in the United States, according to the Institute of International Education, a New York nonprofit. That was nearly 5,000 more students than second-place Japan, until recently the largest source of foreign students in the United States. Chinese represented about 10 percent of the total U.S. foreign student population of 490,933.
Ohio State University, with 637 Chinese students among its total enrollment of 55,000, had the most Chinese students in the 1998-99 academic year, according to a partial list of Institute for International Education figures made available to Knight Ridder. In all, 128 American universities and colleges had at least 100 Chinese students. Among states, New York led with 4,287 Chinese students, followed by California, with 3,515; Texas, with 3,060; Ohio, with 2,640; and Illinois, with 2,373. Three-quarters were graduate students; 12 percent undergraduates. The rest are non-degree students or students of English.
A U.S. immigration official here, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said experience shows that more than 99 percent of Chinese students remain in the United States after graduating.
Even Yang Zhen wouldn't return immediately. "I don't pretend I don't have plans to work awhile in the U.S.," he said over a cup of coffee at a downtown Starbucks. Yang's first challenge is to get into a school that provides him financial aid. That matters both because he needs money and because visas go only to students who provide convincing assurances that they won't need a job.
Yang, a top student in the 1997 class of the respected Beijing Foreign Studies University, is optimistic as he awaits the outcome of admission and aid negotiations with, among others, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and the University of Miami. He picked them from friends' recommendations and the annual rankings by the magazine U.S. News & World Report.
"We know that the United States has lots of famous schools and that we can get a world-class education, especially at the graduate level," Yang said in impeccable English, his undergraduate major. Yang's parents are reluctant to part with their only child. But as they sipped tea one recent evening in a modest south Beijing apartment tinted blue by the exercise program playing on the television, both endorsed their son's decision.
"I think an MBA (a master's degree in business administration) would probably be best," said his mother, Pan Lili, whose own education was cut short by the turbulence of the Cultural Revolution, when China's universities were closed. "It's fashionable in China, and very useful."
So prized are U.S. student visas that the deceptions used to acquire them can be elaborate. When a group of 16 "students" showed up at the U.S. Embassy here last summer seeking visas to attend an academic program at Brigham Young University's Hawaii campus, all of their papers, including a letter of invitation, seemed to be in order. It was their accents that betrayed them. The visa officer interviewing them suspected that they came from Fujian Province on China's southeast coast, though their passports indicated they were from elsewhere. An investigation revealed that the passports were fake, as were their transcripts from Xi'an Bodi Academy. The Brigham Young program they were to attend didn't exist.
"I was shocked to receive the correspondence purported to come from BYU-Hawaii with my signature fraudulently written," associate dean Theresa K. Bigbie wrote in response to an inquiry from the Embassy. "Though it looks like our letterhead and BYUH's logo, it is not my signature nor a schedule created by our university."
In the '90s, the State Department investigated about 300 cases of visa and passport fraud worldwide, Inspector General Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers told the House Committee on Government Reform last July. About 10 percent, she said, involved allegations that U.S. diplomats had granted visas improperly.
The drama of the student visa quest is played out each working day at the U.S. Embassy by a cast of hundreds. The stage is the Spartan room where supplicants, dozens at a time, line up for two-to-three-minute individual interviews that will set the course of their lives.
Outside, a dozen or so travel agents wait with offers of cheap airplane tickets for anyone who emerges with a smile. Most visa-seekers, however, emerge crushed. Because visa officers conduct as many as 200 interviews per day, they've no time to verify documents or confirm stories. Likeliest to get the nod, according to one former visa officer, are top scholars from well-known Chinese universities who've been accepted, with financial aid, by well-known U.S. schools.
"We skim the cream," she said. "It's a wrenching, emotionally racking experience for both sides," she continued. "The visa officers must steel themselves to try to follow the law, and the applicants sometimes end up screaming that they've ruined their lives. "One man fainted on me," she recalled. "I thought he was dead, that I had killed him. I rushed to his side, shouting, 'Are you all right? Are you all right?' "He opened his eyes and said, 'Yes. Now can I have my visa?' "
Ohio Judge Rules on Profiling Issue
Troopers May Not Ask about Immigration Status in Routine Stops
by John Seewer, Associated Press
Akron Beacon Journal
TOLEDO (AP) -- Asking drivers about their immigration status during routine traffic stops is illegal, a federal judge has ruled. State troopers who pose such questions are violating equal protection guarantees in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. District Judge James Carr said Thursday.
Carr said it was likely that "racial stereotyping influences the kinds of questions an officer chooses to ask during a traffic stop.'' It's the latest decision in a debate over racial profiling, a practice by which police stop people and question them on the basis of their race. The U.S. Justice Department is studying the issue. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 200 police departments are tracking racial and ethnic information to help determine whether officers stop minority drivers unfairly.
Nine Hispanic motorists and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a union representing migrant laborers, sued the State Highway Patrol four years ago. They said troopers routinely stopped Hispanics without justification, asked about immigration status and in some cases confiscated green cards.
They claimed to have been detained on the basis of race and alleged that their rights were violated when they were stopped, searched and held. "It's pretty clear that race is what's triggering this,'' said Mark Finnegan, a lawyer with the Equal Justice Foundation, which represented the farm labor union.
"The big question that remains is why is the highway patrol investigating immigration laws,'' Finnegan said.
Lt. John Born, a spokesman for the patrol, said yesterday he could not comment because he had not seen the ruling. He did say it was the patrol's policy to turn over questions about a person's residency status to federal immigration officials.
The court still must decide whether the patrol routinely stops Hispanics without justification. A trial on that issue is scheduled to begin May 16. Carr's ruling expands upon a decision he issued in September that said troopers can ask motorists about their immigration status and seize green cards if there is reason to believe the papers are counterfeit.
In the September decision, Carr said there was no evidence that troopers were unreasonably detaining the Hispanic motorists who sued. That ruling, however, did not address the equal protection guarantees.
Carr's latest ruling said that lawyers for the farm labor union had introduced direct evidence that "Hispanic motorists are treated differently than white motorists.''
Plan to Track Foreign Students Criticized
By Katherine Hutt Scott
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - Immigration officials are readying a $43 million computerized system to track all 500,000 foreign students in the United States under a program inspired by the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center. ''It's really easy to get a student visa from any country,'' said Efren Hernandez III, an immigration official. ''And once you're here, we don't know where you are. You could drop out of school and be on the streets, or you could stay in school and study something technical that you could use against us.''
Some colleges see benefits in the new system, which under a 1996 law must be operational by 2003. It essentially will computerize information that colleges already collect and submit on paper to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. A pilot program at 20 colleges showed that an electronic version streamlines the reporting process and speeds up USCIS handling of student requests.
But many people don't like the plan. Experts question whether the tracking system will help prevent future terrorist attacks. Some schools and students don't like the idea of government watching over their shoulders, and many oppose a requirement that colleges collect a fee from foreign students to pay for the tracking system. ''It's troubling for us,'' said Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government relations for the American Council on Education, which represents 1,800 colleges and universities. ''We think the intellectual mission of the university is to not get caught up in international politics. But the sad reality of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that colleges and universities are not islands.''
The World Trade Center bombing proved that. A Jordanian man convicted in the deadly attack, Eyad Ismoil, had entered the United States to attend Wichita State University in Kansas. After three semesters, he dropped out and joined a group of Islamic terrorists.
The 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building also helped the drive for a computerized tracking system. Investigators initially suspected foreign terrorists and asked the government for names of nearby foreign students. But that information wasn't readily available because USCIS records sat in paper files, not computer files.
''It would be foolish to assume that countries that sponsor terrorism would not use students to some terrorist advantage,'' said Allen Kay, spokesman for Rep. Lamar S. Smith, R-Texas, who sponsored a provision in a 1996 immigration law that requires the tracking system. ''Tracking foreign students is one of many prudent steps we can take to help prevent terrorist acts.''
Between 1991 and 1996, the United States issued 9,767 visas to students from five Middle Eastern countries on the U.S. State Department's list of seven countries whose governments sponsor terrorists, according to a 1997 report published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A high number of those students studied subjects that could help their countries develop weapons, the report said.One terrorism expert said a tracking system wouldn't help prevent future attacks unless the USCIS improves its coordination with law enforcement authorities, which is unlikely. But it could help bring a perpetrator to justice after an attack and help the U.S. government monitor what foreign students are learning.
''I sincerely doubt that that (tracking system) would be able to stop somebody from planning an event such as the World Trade Center bombing,'' said Stephanie Lanz, a specialist in terrorism and information warfare at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Under the new system, schools would use the Internet to send the USCIS information about each foreign student, such as name, address, visa expiration date and field of study. The schools would notify USCIS if the student transferred to another school, dropped below a full course load or dropped out of school entirely. But USCIS couldn't do much if a foreign student dropped off its radar screen, acknowledged Hernandez, acting chief of the USCIS division that handles foreign students. If the USCIS could find a student suspected of violating his visa status, it could deport him. But if the student disappeared, the USCIS has limited resources for tracking him down, he said. Even an ineffective Big Brother is unappealing to colleges and foreign students.
''I do suspect that they will have a strong emphasis on tracking people from the Third World countries like India and China who have traditionally been viewed with suspicion by the BCIS,'' said Balaji Krishnapuram, a 22-year-old from India earning a engineering doctorate at Duke University in Durham, N.C. India and China are among the top 15 countries whose students attend U.S. colleges. None of those 15 is on the list of terrorism sponsors.
''Congress has singled out foreign students for special tracking and scrutiny,'' said Norman Peterson, director of international programs at Montana State University in Bozeman. ''They aren't doing this for foreign businessmen, they aren't doing this for foreign tourists or other classes of individuals, and I think that's bad policy.''
Another controversy over fees to pay for the tracking system may delay the project. The USCIS has proposed charging foreign students - including some exchange students and visiting scholars - $95 each time they enroll in a degree-granting program in a U.S. college, university, vocational school or language school. The proposed regulations generated about 4,800 protest letters. Only a 1986 law that granted amnesty to illegal immigrants has generated more, said USCIS spokeswoman Eyleen M. Schmidt.
The schools say it's inappropriate for them to serve as collection agents for the government because schools are hosts and advisers for foreign students, according to a Gannett News Service review of letters at USCIS headquarters. Colleges say collecting the fee would increase their operating costs, forcing them to raise tuition or cut funding for academic programs. Schmidt said the BCIS, in response, will propose to Congress that it, rather than the schools, collect the fee.
Despite the complaints, the new tracking system has some admirers among the 20 Southeastern colleges and universities in the pilot program for the past two school years. It is easier for schools to fill out electronic questionnaires on the foreign students than to mail in paper ones, said Catheryn Cotten, in charge of student visas at the medical facilities of Duke University. And
the USCIS answered student requests for permission to work within a month, compared to the typical four to six months.
''If the students get benefits and the schools get benefits, I think (the tracking system) is worth a reasonable fee,'' Cotten said.