Foreigners Flood Halls of Higher Learning
By Andrea Billups
The Washington Times
Record numbers of international students are studying at U.S. colleges and universities, a new study has found. Foreign student enrollment rose 5 percent this year, the second biggest increase in the past 10 years, according to a report by the Institute of International Education (IIE), which has conducted the annual statistical survey of foreign students in the United States since 1949. In the 1999-2000 academic year, 514,723 foreign students attended U.S. schools, according to the study, "Open Doors 2000." "These numbers highlight the central role of U.S. colleges and universities in strengthening our relations with those who live beyond our borders," said William B. Bader, assistant secretary of state for education and
cultural affairs, whose office funded the IIE report through a grant. "When these students return home, they take with them an appreciation of American values, culture and society that contributes to improved bilateral relations, business relationships and cultural ties," he said.
The upward trend in international enrollment began two years ago after four years of moderate growth, IIE officials said. The United States remains the most popular destination for foreign students to study worldwide, but the percentage has fallen off from 40 percent to 30 percent in the past decade. IIE President Allan E. Goodman urged the nation to continue to do what is necessary to attract more international students for both economic and policy reasons. Although international students make up only 3 percent of the nation's college student population, they add more than $12 billion to the economy in tuition, living expenses and other college costs, the report found. China, for the second year in a row, sent the most students to study in the United States, according to the report, which said Chinese enrollment rose 7 percent to 54,466. India was second with 42,337, an increase of 13 percent over the previous year.
Despite a recent economic crisis, South Korea recovered and sent 41,191 students to study in the United States, an increase of 5 percent.Enrollment fell for Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia, but rose
for Mexico (10 percent), Brazil (7 percent) and Turkey (8 percent). Since 1993, international student enrollment has increased at community colleges by about 46 percent, the IIE said. In the 1999-2000 academic year, community colleges have seen a 6 percent rise in foreign students, who numbered 85,817.
"International students have begun to use our community colleges the same way Americans do: to get a good, solid education at a lower cost," said Todd Davis, who edited the Open Doors report. "The increased international student presence is helping to internationalize these campuses," Mr. Davis said. "This is particularly valuable since fewer American community college students have been able to take advantage of study-abroad opportunities to date."
Of the foreign students enrolled in the United States, 24,574 are studying within 50 miles of Washington, D.C., the IIE said. More than 25,600 are studying in the Boston area, while 24,722 are in or near Los Angeles. Other cities with high foreign enrollments include Chicago, with 13,607, and San Francisco, with 13,275, the study said The most popular majors for foreign students included business and management (20 percent), engineering (15 percent), and mathematics and computer sciences (19 percent).
The "Open Doors" report is on line at:
http://www.opendoorsweb.org/Lead%20Stories/international_studs.htm
Bush has Nader, Eliáán to Thank for Eroding Gore Support
By Rafael Lorente
The Fort-Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
WASHINGTON -- A massive number of voters in Broward and Palm Beach counties combined with heavy black turn out made Florida's presidential election too close to call more than 24 hours after the polls closed.
But black voters and the Democratic base in South Florida were apparently not enough to overcome the effect that Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and a little boy named Eliáán Gonzáález had on the presidential election. Seniors, usually reliable Democrats, also seemed to prefer Bush by a slim margin, at least one exit poll showed.
...
If Bush wins, though, he will have the liberal Nader and Miami-Dade's conservative Cuban-American voters to thank. Just four years after giving as much as 40 percent of their vote to Bill Clinton, Cuban-Americans returned to their roots Tuesday and voted overwhelmingly Republican. Many cited the Clinton administration's return of Eliáán to Cuba as a large reason for their vote. "The kid's safety was better here," said Andrew Jewett, 27. "The Democrats violated the (family's) civil rights." Ever since the raid on the Little Havana home in April, Cuban leaders had been asking their constituents to punish the Democrats on Tuesday. Most did not believe Gore when he said that he opposed sending the boy back to Cuba without a court hearing.
...
"What I'm assuming is Cubans returned to the Republican Party. They turned out in large numbers, too," said Lance deHaven-Smith, associate director of the Florida Institute of Government at Florida State University. At precincts like 555 near Southwest Eighth Street, south of Miami International Airport, Cubans made up three-quarters of the residents in the 1990 census. There, Bush got 89 percent of the vote. The same held at precinct 510 east of the airport, where Bush got 79 percent of the vote and Cubans made up almost three-quarters of residents in 1990. More than 70 percent of voters turned out at both precincts.
Immigration Blamed for Slack in Sentencing Guidelines
By David E. Rovella, The National Law Journal
Law.com
Federal judges are handing down more sentences that fall below the ranges set by the U.S. sentencing guidelines, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Agency officials say that the increase in "downward departures" is due in large part to a surge in illegal-immigration cases. But members of Congress are accusing the federal judiciary of more general abuse of the 13-year-old guidelines, as well as the Justice Department for complicity in not appealing the vast majority of the cases.
An Oct. 13 Senate hearing, ostensibly called to address the 17 percent increase in downward departures since 1989, paid special attention to the Justice Department's reluctance to appeal such rulings. The last-minute hearing, complained one federal judge who requested anonymity, would probably not have happened were it not an election year.
One sentencing expert says that judges still chafe under the guidelines despite a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court ruling widening their discretion. In Koon v. U.S., an appeal from the civil rights prosecution stemming from the 1991 Los Angeles Police Department attack on motorist Rodney King, the court held that appellate judges may give broad deference to trial court sentencing decisions. U.S. attorneys cite Koon as one of the reasons that they appeal few downward departures.
"It's clear that federal judges have been searching for ways to circumvent the strictness of the guidelines," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a sentencing reform group in Washington, D.C. "They believe that there are far too many cases where they are overly constrained."
But the U.S. Sentencing Commission chairwoman, Judge Diana E. Murphy of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, says that the case has assuaged the concerns of most federal judges. "The Koon case has done a lot to get judges to buy into the sentencing guideline system," she says.
Departing more often
According to the commission, 55,000 federal sentences were handed down in 1999. The number of defendants sentenced within the guideline ranges has been dropping steadily, from 71 percent in 1994 to 65 percent in 1999. Upward departures changed little, remaining below 1 percent.
Some departures, labeled "substantial assistance," are based on a defendant's cooperation and a prosecutor's request for a lesser sentence. Others, however, generally involve factors determined solely by the judge. Judges may go outside the prescribed range set for each offense by finding the existence of factors not addressed by the guidelines.
The percentage of substantial-assistance departures actually declined by 1 percentage point between 1994 and 1999, to 19 percent of all federal sentences handed down.
District courts in the 2nd and 9th circuits were responsible for most of the downward departures granted in 1999, with judges in California, Washington state and New York leading the pack. Thirty-two percent of
federal sentences in the District of Connecticut fell below guideline ranges for reasons other than substantial assistance. Judges in the Eastern District of New York, which encompasses Long Island and three of the five New York City counties, granted similar departures in 31 percent of their cases.
In the Eastern District of Washington, 41 percent of all federal sentences involved downward departures not involving defendants' assistance to the prosecution, compared with 17 percent in 1994. In the Southern District of California, 49 percent of similar sentences were below the guideline range, up from 21 percent in 1994.
The 1st Circuit had the highest rate of adherence to the guidelines, with 72 percent of all sentences handed down in 1999 falling within the recommended range, although the Western District of Kentucky, in the 6th Circuit, had the highest district-level rate at 91 percent.
Tim McGrath, staff director for the sentencing commission, says that theincrease in departures can be explained by federal immigration cases. Almost 30 percent of the sentences given in 1999 immigration cases involved a downward departure unrelated to assistance to prosecutors -- a 10-point jump since 1994. McGrath explains that judges in districts overburdened with such cases grant departures in exchange for a defendant's agreement not to challenge deportation. "If you subtract ... the immigration offenses, the within-guideline-range percentage goes up to 89 or 90 percent," McGrath says. "In some respects, the guidelines are working as expected."
Commission statistics listing the reasons that judges give for granting downward departures show that, with the exception of deportation, the primary reasons for departures have remained the same. These include mitigating role in the crime, plea agreements, diminished capacity, physical condition, family ties and rehabilitation, and various other reasons unique to individual cases. Conversely, deportation as a factor in departures increased from 1 percent to 20 percent between 1992 and 1999.
On Capitol Hill on Oct. 13, Senator Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., accused federal judges of undercutting the system and the Clinton Justice Department of remaining passive, pointing to just 19 government appeals of some 8,304 non-substantial-assistance departures last year.
"If the trend continues much longer, we will see more criminals being sentenced below the guidelines than within them," Thurmond said during an Oct. 13 criminal justice oversight subcommittee hearing.
Federal sentencing expert Nancy J. King, a law professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., says that despite the numbers, judicial opposition to the guidelines is not widespread. "Some of the judges who
have never sentenced under any other system are not as opposed to it as those who have," she says.
One judge who has worked under both systems is Murphy, who concedes some sympathy for judges who miss the unfettered discretion they had before the guidelines.
"I can tell you there were many times when I was a trial judge that I might have granted a departure -- where the defendant was young, had special family circumstances or came from a part of the community where living is hard -- and some of these factors are forbidden for departure," she says. But under the guidelines, she adds, judges retain sufficient latitude as long as they give their reasons for granting a lesser sentence. She says the agency will incorporate a study of departure trends in its 15th anniversary review, due in 2002.
Administration Appears to Soften Position on Amnesty
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton vetoed a spending bill late Monday, hours after House Republican leaders scuttled a tentative, bipartisan agreement on education funding that held brief promise of breaking the year-end budget stalemate.
Clinton's exercise of the ultimate White House legislative power, on a bill that funded several core government agencies and allowed a pay raise for Congress, came as top Republican lawmakers were attacking efforts to advance sweeping new workplace safety regulations.
The developments further heightened the stakes in a budget battle between the Republican Congress and Clinton that is unfolding just a week before the national election. In play are billions of dollars in new school
funding, measures to repeal a telephone excise tax and to cut other taxes, a proposal to raise the minimum wage, an effort to ease immigration laws and other important matters.
The controversial workplace regulations that drew renewed attention Monday are viewed by labor unions and the Clinton administration as essential to protect as many as 300,000 workers a year from repetitive-motion injuries such as typing, reaching and lifting. But business leaders and Republicans call the proposed rules an expensive and unneeded federal mandate.
The increasingly intense year-end confrontation is forcing many federal agencies to run only on daily stopgap spending bills, known as continuing resolutions. To avoid a government shutdown, Congress passed the 10th such resolution Monday. One month into a new fiscal year, several critical spending bills for 2001 remain unresolved.
The budget dispute now conceivably could last through election day. That would inject a wild card into close campaigns for control of the House, Senate and White House and, potentially, leave crucial decisions about the nation's business in the hands of a lame-duck Congress.
On immigration, another critical year-end issue, administration officials took a major step toward compromise as they dropped their insistence on one proposal that would allow permanent U.S. residence for at least 500,000 immigrants who entered the United States illegally before 1986.
Instead, John Podesta, the White House chief of staff, signaled in a letter to a key Republican senator that Clinton would consider other ideas to help immigrants who have been living for many years in the country in legal limbo.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) has proposed helping some people in that class by granting them "due process" to pursue green cards under a previous 1986 reform. The White House says Hatch's measure does not go far enough.
But debate is focusing on whether Congress will boost immigration rights for what advocates estimate are hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans and Haitians who fled their countries during the late 1980s and early 1990s in a period of regional upheaval.
Republican leaders say those would-be immigrants--many, perhaps most, of whom came to the United States illegally--should not be moved to the head of a line of more than 3 million immigration applicants. But Democrats, and some centrist Republicans, note that Congress cut special deals in 1997 and 1998 to allow Nicaraguans and Cubans favorable immigration terms. They complain that Republican leaders appear sympathetic to refugees of left-wing authoritarian regimes but not to those who flee oppressive right-wing regimes.
"It is long past time to close the chapter on this country's history of choosing some people for preferential treatment," Podesta said in his letter to Hatch.
The issue is crucial to many people in California, Florida and other states with high numbers of Central American and Caribbean immigrants. Southern California is home to many Salvadorans and Guatemalans who would be affected.
Georgia Colleges Open to Even Illegal Immigrants
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Illegal immigrants in Georgia can attend the state's public colleges and universities if they have good grades and meet the same requirements as other applicants. That's the message quietly sent in the past month by University System of Georgia officials to the state's 34 public colleges and universities. They started spreading the word after they reached a rather startling conclusion: Not only can illegal immigrants go to college from now on, they've always been allowed to attend.
That's contrary to what some teachers, guidance counselors and state officials have been telling illegal immigrants for years.
University System Chancellor Stephen Portch concedes admitting illegal immigrants may be controversial. "Most things we do we get some heat for, but I think it's pretty clear . . . that this state's economy is quite dependent (on immigrants), and that it's in our best interest to increase access to higher education," Portch said. "I think it's a legitimate debate for reasonable people to have, but we have come down on the side that our mission statement says we want a more educated Georgia. "When all is said and done, we're providing access and doing the right thing." Admissions directors were sent a memo Sept. 25 stating "there is no impediment to the admission of any academically qualified student."
The memo doesn't mention illegal immigrants, but the implication is clear to education officials and Latino advocates.
Federal law requires public elementary, middle and high schools to educate all children, including illegal immigrants, but no such law addresses access to higher education. Advocates in Georgia have argued that high school students who are here illegally should be able to go to college because it was their parents --- not the children --- who violated immigration laws.
"You don't punish the child for the decision of the parent," said Maritza Soto Keen, executive director of the Latin American Association in metro Atlanta.
State officials have wrestled with the question of whether to let illegal immigrants go to public colleges in Georgia. Now they say illegal immigrants have been able to get into college all along, a message that certainly was not clear to either the immigrants or the Board of Regents.
"There was a perception that there was some barrier (for illegal immigrants) to higher education in Georgia that didn't exist," said Lisa A. Rossbacher, president of Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta. "I don't know of specific impediments. I think it was more of a rumor than anything else."
That's news to people like 21-year-old Evelyn Gomez, whose parents left Guatemala and crossed the border illegally with her when she was 15. She dreamed of college while attending a metro Atlanta high school. She graduated last year with a 3.2 grade point average and wanted to study computer science or accounting in college. But she said friends and high school guidance counselors told her applying to college would be a waste of time.
According to Jennifer A. Lund, associate director of international programs and services for the Board of Regents, the new memo clarified but did not actually change policy. She said it came after repeated inquiries from admissions offices and parents of gifted students who were in this country without permission.
Portch said the state attorney general's office found no state law to keep illegal immigrants from enrolling in Georgia colleges.
Yet, several barriers could remain. For example, some college applications ask for Social Security numbers, something most illegal immigrants lack. They may not know that college officials can assign them an identification number instead.
Applications often question citizenship status. The forms may list three categories: U.S. citizen, legal resident or non-immigrant alien, a term that encompasses foreign students who come to the United States legally to go to college. Illegal immigrants do not fit into any of the categories.
Cost could be another obstacle for illegal immigrants. Portch said he expects they will have to pay higher tuition than residents, even if they grew up in Georgia. State residents at Georgia State University, Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia pay about $2,500 a year, compared with $7,520 for non-residents. The differences are as stark at the state's other four-year public colleges --- $1,876 for residents compared with $5,630 for non-residents --- and at two-year colleges --- $1,280 compared with $3,840.
Illegal immigrants are not eligible for HOPE scholarships because recipients must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, said Bill Flook, the program's director. Illegal immigrants also are ineligible for most forms of federal financial aid or federally funded student loans.
Illegal immigrants can attend college for in-state tuition at most schools in Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky and New York. But they pay out-of-state tuition in California and Texas, said Michael A. Olivas, a law professor at the University of Houston who has studied access of illegal immigrants to higher education.
Portch said he expects no rush of illegal immigrants into Georgia colleges. How many of the 1,500 Hispanic and 1,984 Asian 12th-graders in Georgia schools are illegal immigrants is unknown.
Court Can't Stop Deportation, Judge Says
Plain Dealer Reporter
CINCINNATI - A federal appeals court said yesterday that it probably lacks authority to block immigration officials from deporting a Polish family with two young sons who are Cleveland-born U.S. citizens. Circuit Judge Gilbert S. Merritt called the Zajac family of Garfield Heights victims of a confusing set of rules. He said immigration regulations have "gotten so detailed ... it''s kind of like the tax code."
The Zajacs'' boys - third-grader Michael and first-grader Dominic - attend St. Therese School in Garfield Heights. Sister Jane Morgan, the school''s principal, says they are as "American as apple pie." But it now seems likely they will be forced to grow up in Poland, a country they have never seen, because their mother forgot to file paperwork that would have granted her political asylum. The government says she no longer is eligible for U.S. residency. Merritt said he was sympathetic to the family''s plight, but added that Congress has more power over immigration rules than the courts. "Maybe a change in the law might benefit them," he said.
The Zajacs are not at risk of being shipped to Poland anytime soon. Typically, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals waits months before issuing a decision. Teresa Zajac, now 29, was a refugee from Soviet-bloc communism before the Cold War ended. If she had not missed a 1991 deadline to apply for political asylum, the family would still be welcome.
Teresa Zajac said she was confused by the process for becoming a citizen. "I didn''t know about it," she said. "I''ve tried to do everything else right." Her husband, Stefan, 55, also is fighting a deportation order. But his case has not yet come up in court.
After emigrating in the 1980s, they met, married, and took out a mortgage on a house in the suburbs and started to raise a family. Michael was born at MetroHealth Medical Center in 1992, where Dominic arrived two years later.
The Zajacs came to the attention of immigration officials when they walked into the agency''s Cleveland office and asked to fill out papers for permanent-residence green cards. Merritt, who presided over a three-judge panel that heard their appeal, asked Justice Department lawyer Susan Houser if the government would consider leniency. "She has two children who are American citizens. Is there anything else you can do based upon her children''s American citizenship?" Merritt said.
Houser said the rules were clear: Because she failed to seek asylum, Teresa Zajac was deportable to Poland. "It just seems a little strange that she could be deported when she had two small children that are American citizens," Merritt said. "It just seems a little harsh." Houser said the boys could stay behind without their mother.