Immigration- New LIFE Act Legalization-Amnesty Benefits
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), created a "legalization" or "Amnesty" program that allowed certain aliens to apply for lawful permanent resident status ("green card"). There were three class action lawsuits that involved claims by hundreds of thousands of aliens relating this legalization-amnesty program: Catholic Social Services, Inc. v. Meese, Reno v. Catholic Social Services, Inc., 509 U.S. 43 (1993) (CSS), Legal of United Latin American Citizens v. BCIS, vacated sub nom. Reno v. Catholic Social Services, Inc., (LULAC), and Zambrano v. BCIS, vacated, 918 (1993) (Zambrano) The aliens in CSS, LULAC, and Zambrano argued that either their claims were wrongly denied or that they were improperly discouraged by USCIS from applying.
The recently enacted LIFE Act provides certain aliens who applied for class membership in the CSS, LULAC, or Zambrano lawsuit the ability to apply to adjust status to that of a permanent resident. Applicants for adjustment of status under the LIFE Act (LIFE Legalization provisions) will have to establish that:
· Before October 1, 2000, they filed with the Attorney General a written claim for class membership, with or without filing fee, in the CSS, LULAC, or Zambrano lawsuit;
· They entered the United States before January 1, 1982, and resided continuously in the United States in an unlawful status since such date through May 4, 1988;
· They were continuously physically present in the United States during the period beginning on November 6, 1986, and ending on May 4, 1988;
· They are admissible to the United States;
· They have not been convicted of a felony or of three or more misdemeanors committed in the United States;
· They have never assisted in the persecution of any person or persons on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion; and
· They can meet basic citizenship skills or are satisfactorily pursuing a course of study to achieve these basic citizenship skills.
It must be noted that even if an alien filed a proper claim for class membership and was denied class membership by the Service, he or she will still be eligible to apply for LIFE Legalization.
The LIFE Act provides a 1-year application period that will begin on June 1, 2001.
The LIFE Act allows for LIFE Legalization applications to be filed from abroad.
The LIFE Act allows for eligible aliens applying from within the United States to receive employment authorization and travel privileges while their applications are pending with the Service.
USCIS requests on the rise
By Mae M. Cheng
Newsday
Despite a steady increase in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's budget and staffing between 1994 and 2000, the number of pending applications quadrupled during those years to 3.9 million, according to a recently released independent government audit http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01488.pdf
The U.S. General Accounting Office report finds that only the citizenship backlog has begun to diminish between 1999 and 2000. The backlog for all other benefits applications-including those applying for permanent residency, to replace their permanent residency cards, or to petition a relative for permanent residency-has grown since 1999.
Besides the 1.8 million pending applications for naturalization, the second largest backlog was for those applying to adjust their status to that of permanent residents, the report found. In 2000, there were 1.5 million such applications in the backlog, more than three times as many as there were in 1994, when there were some 442,000 cases waiting to be processed.
"The uncertainty caused by lengthy processing times has reportedly disrupted many applicants' lives," the GAO report states.
The study also states that about 25 percent of the 3 million people with applications pending as of Sept. 30, 2000 had been waiting at least 21 months for the USCIS to process their cases.
"The weaknesses and the problems in the GAO report were ones USCIS had already identified and is in the process of correcting," said Eyleen Schmidt, USCIS spokeswoman.
Immigration experts also believe Congress is to blame for the backlogs.
"It's no doubt partly a function of USCIS failures internally, but largely, it's a legacy of congressional neglect," Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said of the backlogs. "The level of spending on the USCIS is still insufficient." "Our current immigration policy is geared towards buying guns and military
equipment at the border rather than buying computers and for staffing to adjudicate applications," said Margie McHugh, executive director of The New York Immigration Coalition.
Jobless Texans: Remember the Adea
By Ed Frauenheim
Wired News
The Adea Group of Dallas, Texas may have gotten more than it bargained for in its campaign to snatch up unemployed H-1B visa workers.
The IT staffing firm put out a press release earlier this month calling on H-1Bs in particular to apply for 100 programming jobs at telecommunications clients. And thanks in part to ads purchased at a Hindi-language movie theater in Texas, the effort has succeeded.
About a dozen guest workers per day have contacted Adea since May 3. At one point some in the audience at the Dallas theater chanted "Adea, Adea," said company spokesman Howard LaMunion.
But the Adea Group's recruiting effort also has drawn fire from critics of the visa program, which allows as many as 195,000 skilled foreign workers to enter the country for up to six years.
The Programmer's Guild said it may file a discrimination complaint with the Department of Justice. More generally, H-1B foes say Adea's attempt to hire desperate guest workers highlights the way the visa program can exploit both foreign and U.S. workers.
"The H-1B visa program was created, ostensibly, to provide workers who supposedly didn't exist in the U.S.," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank. "It's hard to make that claim when the tech slump has put a lot of people out of work."
What may irk critics of H-1B visas even more is Adea's apparent belief that foreign workers are better.
In its May 3 press release, Adea executive vice president Doug Ortega said, "We are currently focusing on professionals with H-1B visas because they most likely have the level of experience we need for mission-critical projects and a sense of urgency in securing new employment if they have been recently laid off."
The Adea Group is the brainchild of Abid Abedi, an Indian immigrant-turned-U.S. citizen. In four years, it has grown to 600 employees with a client list that includes Verizon, Sprint and Alcatel, and projects revenues this year of $100 million. The firm already has about 250 H-1B workers and two offices in India.
Just two to three domestic techies per day are applying, compared to the deluge of H-1Bs, LaMunion said. But he claims Adea's strategy is ultimately patriotic: If thousands of well-trained H-1Bs return to their home countries, they'd add to the drain of IT projects going offshore. "The worst thing would be to lose the work overseas," LaMunion said.
But critics say the H-1B program has helped speed the growth of IT shops in India, and that keeping guest workers at U.S. firms only makes matters worse. "There will be a point when the H-1Bs are far-better trained than the American engineers," said unemployed Phoenix programmer Rob Sanchez. "It's pretty scary."
Twice in the past two years or so, Sanchez has lost a job while the company retained an H-1B. His last employer said Sanchez, 45, lacked database skills. That's something of an irony, since he's devoted his free time to building an anti-H-1B visa website with a database of Labor Department statistics. According to Sanchez's site, Adea filed an application to pay software engineers last year as little as $40,000 -- a salary well below the 1999 Department of Labor estimate of an average $65,780 for application software engineers.
Adea officials declined to comment on company salaries, except to say they pay fair market wages. Ortega also said the company is not biased against domestic techies.
John Miano, one of the directors of the Programmer's Guild, is less sure. He questions Adea's H-1B focus given the cutbacks announced at a variety of tech firms, including JDS Uniphase, Intel and Cisco. "Aren't there Americans being laid off from the same places that the H-1Bs are being laid off?" he asked.
Miano emailed a copy to the Justice Department and says his organization may file a formal complaint.
John Trasvina, the Justice Department special counsel for immigration-related unfair employment practices, wouldn't comment on the Adea Group case. But he said his office is aware that attention to H-1Bs in hiring or layoffs could lead to discrimination against domestic techies: "We will very seriously take on the cases where we see any violation of the law."
Few Winners, Many Applicants in Visa Lottery
By Mae M. Cheng
Newsday
The State Department received a record 13 million entries for its most recent diversity visa lottery program in which only 50,000 people will receive green cards, or proofs of U.S. permanent residency, officials said Friday.
About 3 million of the entries were disqualified because they were not submitted under the guidelines the State Department had issued. The program, which distributes green cards to people from countries with low immigration rates to the United States, last year saw 11 million applicants, with 8 million the year before.
Of the 10 million qualified entries submitted last October, 90,000 people have been selected and notified to apply for green cards, State Department officials said. More applicants are notified than there are visas available because some people selected decide not to apply for green cards.
The applicants, who were selected at random, need to quickly follow the instructions in their notification letters to ensure that they receive one of the available green cards, officials said. All those selected must have their visas issued by Sept. 30, 2002, or they will fail to benefit from the program.
The next diversity visa lottery program is scheduled to kick off in October. Instructions for entering the lottery will be released in late July or August, according to State Department officials.
The lottery program came about under the Immigration Act of 1990 and has gained increasing popularity among immigrants seeking to permanently come to the United States.
Philippine Nurses Coming to Detroit
The Detroit-Free Press
The interview lasted about 15 minutes. Edita Dimapilis said the questions were concise, and her expectations were grand.
"I went into the interview hoping that it would lead to a better life for me and my family," said Dimapilis, who is a registered nurse at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
"Many nursing students in the Philippines were just like me, in search of landing a job abroad. It's one of the main reasons why they went into nursing -- to get that opportunity," the 40-year-old said.
Nearly 14 years later, Dimapilis was reminded of the struggles she faced finding work in the Philippines when she returned last fall to help the Henry Ford Health System recruit nurses to fill vacant positions.
Dimapilis was one of six representatives from Henry Ford who traveled to the Philippines from Nov. 30 to Dec. 15 to interview and lure registered nurses to work at one of metro Detroit's largest health systems.
Officials Henry Ford and other health systems in the nation have periodically tried to recruit nurses outside the United States over the last 30 years. They say the nursing job market gets tight at least once a decade because some nurses get fed up with long hours and low pay and leave the field. In addition, fewer students are entering nursing schools.
During the 16-day Henry Ford trip, the team reviewed 598 resumes and interviewed 360 nurses. About 150 of the 160 who qualified for nursing positions agreed to take jobs with the health system.
The new recruits must pass Michigan state board licensing exams, meet Immigration and Naturalization Services guidelines and attain a green card before joining Henry Ford this fall, officials said.
All Filipino nurses had to meet specific requirements. They must speak English, have a degree in nursing and have worked at a hospital with at least 150 beds for no less than two years. They also had to answer interview questions about how they would handle situations on the job.
"This is our third time recruiting in the Philippines," said Beverly Jones, chief nursing officer for the Henry Ford Health System. "We have had success in the past and due to the tight labor market, we viewed this as another great opportunity to fill vacant spots with qualified candidates."
Henry Ford representatives traveled to the Philippines in 1970 and 1986. While the number recruited in 1970 is unknown, the hospital attracted about 50 nurses in 1986.
Experts say the trip is proof of the difficulty the nursing profession has had luring American college students into the field. It also shows the troubles the profession has had retaining qualified nurses who are opting for jobs that are less physically demanding, require fewer long shifts and weekend hours and offer better pay and career advancement.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, about 450,000 registered nurses will be needed by 2008 if retirements occur as expected, nursing school enrollments continue declining and more people aren't recruited to the field.
A survey by the Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals shows that many nurses plan to leave the profession out of frustration. But three-fourths of those who expected to quit said they would consider staying if improvements were made.
Jones said that Henry Ford is collecting demographic information from the 2,500 nurses it employs to find long-term solutions to the nursing shortage.
"We are focused on retention," she said. "That's why we are doing our best to find out the average age of a nurse on our staff, their experience level and issues they are facing on the job. We have never had anything comprehensive so we can really being the process."
Meanwhile, Dimapilis said good-paying jobs are difficult to find in the Philippines.
In early 1987, Dimapilis earned about 1,500 pesos a month in the Philippines, or about $75, compared to her monthly pay of $1,840 later that year at Henry Ford.
"Because of the nursing glut in the Philippines, some nurses volunteer or work for free just to keep their experience current," Dimapilis said. "They may pick up paid work in a hotel to earn money."
Other health care systems such as the Detroit Medical Center and St. John haven't recruited nurses in the Philippines. But the DMC has supported legislation that made it easier for Canadian nurses to come to work in Michigan.
Information/ Benefits of Premium Processing Service
What is Premium Processing?
Premium Processing Service is an opportunity for the employer or the beneficiary to request faster processing of certain employment-based petitions and applications to meet the employer''s need to hire foreign workers. The Premium Processing fee is $1,000, which is in addition to the regular filing fees that must be paid to the Service for the filing of certain petitions and applications.
When will Premium Processing be available?
The opportunity to request Premium Processing will be available starting June 1, 2001. Initially, the classifications eligible for Premium Processing requests are: E-1, E-2, H-2A, H-2B, H-3, L-1A, L-1B, Blanket L, O, P, and Q. Starting July 30, 2001, H-1B, R, and TN classifications will be eligible for Premium Processing requests. Notification of any additions or terminations regarding Premium Processing will be published in the Federal Register.
What are the benefits of requesting Premium Processing?
Premium Processing guarantees 15-calendar day processing of certain employment-based petitions and applications. In other words, the Service will issue an approval notice, request for additional evidence, notice of investigation for fraud, or notice of intent to deny within 15 calendar days from the date the petition was received at the Service Center. If the Service does not issue a notice or request within 15 calendar days, your Premium Processing fee will be refunded automatically and the Service will continue processing the petition or application. The Premium Processing Service unit at every Service Center will have a unique address that will be used to file requests for Premium Processing to facilitate expeditious handling. In addition, each Service Center will have dedicated phone number(s), fax number(s), and an e-mail address in order to provide enhanced customer service contact.
Can the fee for Premium Processing Services be waived?
No, the fee for Premium Processing Service cannot be waived for any reason. The Service will continue its existing policy and procedures for expeditious processing of petitions and applications filed by petitioners designated as non-profit by the IRS.
How will employers know which applications and petitions are accepted for Premium Processing Service?
The Service will designate petitions and applications for Premium Processing Service by publishing notices in the Federal Register. These notices will specify the form types and the visa classifications for which Premium Processing Service is available. The notices will also specify the dates on which the availability of Premium Processing Service begins and ends. The Service will also announce temporary termination of Premium Processing Service by publication of a notice in the Federal Register.
Texas OKs Privileges for Illegal Aliens
By Eric Berger
The Houston Chronicle
AUSTIN - Illegal immigrants have edged closer than ever to becoming Texans with the Legislature's decision to allow them to drive legally and to pay discounted state college tuition like other Texas residents.
The surprise that such potentially polarizing issues passed the Legislature is surpassed only by wonder at the ease with which they were approved. Neither faced a close vote.
"To be honest, I never thought my bill would make it," said Rep. Miguel Wise, D-Welasco, who authored legislation that allows illegal immigrants to obtain Texas driver's licenses.
The sponsor of the driver's license bill in the Senate, Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, said it could have been "dangerous" for him to even bring up such an issue in sessions past.
Analysts say the census numbers released earlier this year account for at least part of the shift of conservatives who appear to have toned down anti-immigrant rhetoric.
The 2000 Census found that over the last decade Hispanics grew from one-fourth of Texas' population to one-third. Hispanics' explosive growth fueled 60 percent of the state's population increase.
Officeholders no longer can actively alienate such a large and fast-growing constituency, Gallegos said.
"What I have seen this year is a different attitude on both sides," he said. "I think the Republicans and conservative Democrats are seeing, with the census figures out, that they have to deal with this issue. Everyone now has immigrants in their districts."
Gov. Rick Perry, who has received the driver's license and in-state tuition bills, has not said whether he will sign them. But he has given no indication that he will detour from the path set by his predecessor, George W. Bush, who reached out to Hispanics.
Texas has never been a true hotbed of anti-immigrant sentiment, at least compared to fiery caldrons like California, said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, which promotes Hispanic political growth.
What rhetoric Texas unleashed cooled when Bush said in the mid-1990s that he would not support moves in Texas to limit immigrant access to public services, as California did with its divisive Proposition 187, or efforts to curb bilingualism, Gonzalez said. Still, pro-immigrant measures in the Texas Legislature were chancy at best.
Gonzalez said he believes Republicans are wary of creating unnecessary campaign issues. "It seems to me that the Republicans are being smarter about courting the Latino vote and not giving their opponents any ammunition," he said. "Instead, they'll have some political capital of their own."
Advocates of giving illegal immigrants driver's licenses and access to resident college tuition note that Republicans have plenty of political cover should they face criticism from their anti-immigrant constituencies.
The driver's license bill, its supporters say, had the support of insurance companies, which would see their customer base swell, and organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Among the bill's co-authors was one of the House's most conservative members, Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin.
"It's a public-safety issue, plain and simple," said Keel, a former Travis County sheriff who said the state's residents are well served by having more educated drivers on their highways.
The bill passed the House by a vote of 109-19 and had no trouble in the Senate.
Not that there wasn't closed-door wrangling over these issues, sponsors said. But the legislation was not ultimately blocked in committee or between chambers, a logical place to stop it.
Perry's office offered a similar reason for supporting the driver's license bill to that given by conservative legislators.
"Governor Perry supports legislation that will make our streets and highways safer," said his spokesman, Gene Acuna. "He believes people should have basic knowledge of our traffic laws and prove their ability to drive safely."
The resident tuition bill also had conservative support. Sen. David Sibley, R-Waco, was a co-sponsor when the bill reached the Senate floor. It passed there 30-0 after clearing the House with just one vote against it.
Sibley said it was only fair to extend resident tuition to qualified illegal immigrants who graduated from the state's high schools, most of whom had lived here most of their lives.
"There's a lot of equity in this," he said.
During committee meetings, the sponsors of the legislation, Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, and Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, made persuasive cases by offering testimony from valedictorians and salutatorians from around the state who could not afford to pay nonresident tuition rates, which often are five to 10 times higher.
These bills were also sold as boons, in various ways, to the Texas economy. In addition to helping insurance companies, the driver's license bill in the long run may reduce accidents and the number of uninsured drivers, supporters said. The education bill was touted as an investment in intellectual capital.
These arguments mesh with an increased awareness that immigrants validate their presence in the state by being cogs in the Texas economy, said Tatcho Mindiola, president of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston.
"I think there is a growing recognition of the positive impact immigrants have on our economy," he said. "People are realizing who's taking care of their kids, cutting their yards and building their roads."
Mindiola said he sees other signs of growing acceptance of Hispanics, even among the black community, which at times has expressed concerns that Hispanic workers were cutting into job opportunities for blacks.
In Houston, he noted a partnership between the Mexican consulate and Texas Southern University to create an outreach program to teach immigrants their rights, as well as the creation of an immigrant office within Mayor Lee Brown's administration.
Gallegos said he is heartened by the resounding victory earlier this month of Ed Garza, a young Hispanic urban planner who won the mayor's race in San Antonio with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Garza did surprisingly well in the city's conservative enclaves, he said.
Certainly there is still anti-immigrant sentiment in Texas, but immigrant-bashing no longer provides political traction, at least while the economy remains relatively strong and there are jobs for all, analysts said.
That disdain for illegal immigrants still exists was evident to the sponsors of the bills, who received plenty of hate mail. Noriega, who took the letters in stride, even spirited several around the House floor.
One read: "How can you, as representatives of the legal citizens of the United States, promote illegals? How can you put people who flaunt (sic) our system ahead of our kids who need help? Why do we have to help illegals when our own kids are in so much need? Either become an American or go home."
The point, said Gonzalez and other Hispanics interviewed, is that Latinos are not going anywhere.
"I think the census numbers essentially say, `We're everywhere; get used to it,' " he said.
Newest Import: Teachers
Board of Education Goes to the Caribbean
By Merle English
Newsday
KINGSTON, Jamaica -- They came from across the island of Jamaica, schoolteachers, principals and administrators, some with as many as 30 years experience teaching English, math and science-skills that are in great demand in the New York City public school system.
In an overwhelming response to the Board of Education's ongoing international teacher recruitment drive, nearly 700 applicants-mostly women-turned out at the University of the West Indies Mona campus in Kingston, the island's capital, to fill out applications for a two-year teaching stint that the board is offering to eligible Caribbean teachers.
"We've seen really qualified and quality candidates," said Caryl Cohen, director of recruitment in the Board of Education's newly created Chancellor's Center for Recruitment and Professional Development. Cohen told the teachers, "You're welcome. You're wanted. We're here because we need you." Those who received board commitment letters left with smiling faces last week. Others, told the skills they had were not needed, were dejected.
Many were eager to teach in a new environment, broaden their skills and earn more than the $4,800 to $7,200 a year most teachers earn in Jamaica based on their experience. In New York, they will be paid about $32,000 to $44,000.
Some were facing layoffs in Jamaica. But many said they wanted to help immigrant Caribbean students who score low and are blamed for discipline problems in New York City public schools.
"I have knowledge of the social ills," said Franciska Lorman, a teacher with 10 years experience in early childhood education, who also has social-work, probation and nursing skills. "It's not a biological problem. It's more of an environmental problem." Math teacher Milton Francis said, "If we can help turn the tide, it will be a blessing for them and us." The teachers are needed to help fill 12,000 vacancies citywide that are anticipated as baby boomers among the system's 80,000 teachers reach retirement age, and as the board seeks to decrease class size and expand the international pre-kindergarten programs.
About 600 Jamaican teachers are expected to arrive in New York in August to start work in September. An additional 500 Caribbean teachers were hired during a previous recruiting drive in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. Most will be assigned to middle schools.
Processing teaching diplomas, college degrees, transcripts, resumes and good conduct letters kept a 17-member recruiting team from the Board of Education and from city school districts-including Districts 27 and 29 in Queens-busy evaluating the flood of prospective Jamaican recruits from 9 a.m. to past 10 p.m. Thursday, and most of Friday and Saturday.
New York officials are targeting teachers with five or more years experience in math, English, sciences, early childhood education and Spanish-subjects in which students are doing poorly in school districts with a high percentage of Caribbean students, recruiters said.
But a major reason for the push to bring in Caribbean teachers is a need to bridge a language gap that is viewed as a roadblock to the scholastic achievement of many immigrant Caribbean students.
"I'm sick of hearing that it's the Caribbean children that are not doing well, that it's the Jamaican children that have become the behavior problem, ending up in juvenile detention and joining the youth gangs," City Councilwoman Una Clarke (D-Brooklyn) said in an interview in New York.
Concern that students with discipline problems might end up in the criminal justice system and be deported, spurred Clarke, a Jamaican immigrant and former teacher and city consultant on day care, and George Irish, head of the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College, to push for teacher recruitment in the Caribbean.
Clarke's council district includes Community School District 17, which has the highest number of immigrant Caribbean students in the nation.
"Bringing teachers more closely connected to the students themselves, the teachers would understand the behaviors of the children, the discipline they were used to and the language, too," Clarke said. "And it would be easier to get these teachers to engage parents in the system." "I know of many students who were beaten up because of how they spoke," said Robert Antoine, one of the Board of Education recruiters who traveled to Kingston and a former teacher at Tilden High School in Brooklyn.
Although the new Caribbean hires would not be assigned to teach only Caribbean students, their presence in the schools would make a difference, said Brenda Steele, deputy superintendent for instruction at the board's recruitment center. She told the teachers, "It's important for them to know there are people who are from their own cultural background." But some parents in Jamaica are concerned that the hiring away of teachers off the island perpetrates a brain drain.
"It will reflect negatively on many Jamaicans," said Philip Campbell, a civil servant and father of a 7-year-old girl. "Young prospective teachers who would have given their all are seeing greener pastures." A clerk at the Hilton Hotel and mother of two young children, said, "I'm happy for our teachers because they were having difficulty finding employment.
But I'm sad for the country and the kids." In government circles, and even among teacher advocates, however, the consensus is that there is a surplus of teachers and that recruitment will be beneficial for the island, the teachers and New York schools. It was felt that many will send home foreign exchange dollars and return with more knowledge.
Burchell Whiteman, Jamaica's minister of education, said, "In a system where we have 22,000 teachers, losing a very small percentage of them, we would not have lost all our best teachers."
Foreign Graduates Ask, 'What Now?'
By Diana Jean Schemo
HARLOTTESVILLE, Va. —— As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia here for the last four years, Rasha Shaath, a Palestinian, learned Hebrew. She thrived in classes that made her examine her views and the troubles of her region from many angles.
This summer, Ms. Shaath, 22, will move to her family's new home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she will don the abayya, the Saudis' mandatory covering for women, and look for work, probably as a reporter. Ms. Shaath frets less about the veil than about landing a newspaper job in a country where men and women cannot work together. She fears, on some level, the loss of the person she has become here.
"I worry about not having the kind of interaction that will allow me to remember what I gained in my education and use it," said Ms. Shaath, who completed a bachelor's degree in history and Middle Eastern studies.
She worries, too, that the critical reflexes she sharpened here may be misinterpreted as disloyalty back home. "That can get dangerous, if I allow myself to become too much of an outsider," Ms. Shaath said.
At campuses across the United States, foreign students like Ms. Shaath are facing commencement not only as a new beginning but also with anxiety, tension and divided loyalties. Families in home countries beckon, while graduates juggle questions that their American classmates need never consider: Will the distant, perhaps less developed, economy they left have a place for them? How will they adapt after immersion in American college life? Is it safe to go home? Are they ready?
The share of American undergraduate freshmen who are nonresident foreigners has tripled over the last 30 years, according to the annual freshman survey by the University of California at Los Angeles. The Institute of International Education estimates that students from abroad now represent 515,000 of the 14.5 million students attending institutions of higher education in the United States, an increase of nearly 5 percent over the last year alone. More than half the foreign students come from Asia; most earn degrees for careers in business, engineering and computer science.
After spending the four years of transition to early adulthood away from their countries, with finances often limiting visits back, graduates can have trouble feeling at home anywhere, said Kathy Bellows, who oversees international students and scholars at Georgetown University. Graduation from college shakes an international student's sense of identity and place, Ms. Bellows said.
Though foreigners are courted by universities eager to broaden their profiles —— and for the full, out-of- state tuition they typically fork over —— the welcome mat often frays when they turn to the United States' job market as graduates. In order to extend their student visas for a year of "practical experience," foreigners must get a job in their field of study, and some companies flatly refuse their résumés. The graduates who hope to settle here permanently try to gauge a prospective employer's willingness to sponsor them for a long-term work visa.
As a result, such students cannot take time off to explore the United States or relax after four years of college, said Kath-Ann Gerhardt, associate dean of international students and scholars at the University of California at Davis.
"Your final year as an undergraduate can be very stressful," Ms. Gerhardt said, "but it's an additional layer of concern that international students face."
Jelena Bosanoc of Belgrade felt the constraints of her situation most keenly in early May. On the day her parents were to leave Belgrade for Budapest, the nearest American embassy that would give them a visa to attend her graduation, her father suffered a fatal stroke.
While her classmates planned extended post-graduation travels, Ms. Bosanoc, a Georgetown University senior, could not go home for her father's funeral. Her student visa would have expired in her absence, and her work visa for her new job at Goldman, Sachs was not yet done.
"I was ready to go home and beg the authorities to just let me back," Ms. Bosanoc said. "But my mom even said, `This is not what your dad would want you to do.' "
Aycan Demirhan, a graduate from Istanbul, said two things preoccupied her during her years at Virginia: her family and her immigration status. She said she felt herself a prisoner of these twin worries, particularly when a catastrophic earthquake struck Turkey two years ago.
And when Samer Saadeh, a Beirut- born Virginia senior, took his diploma in early May, he draped the Lebanese flag over his black gown so relatives in Lebanon could pick him out from the sea of graduates on the university's live Web cast.
Alexandre Venot, a 23-year-old at Georgetown who is getting his degree in finance and management, likens the prospect of returning to his family in France to a reverse acculturation, the opposite of his adaptation to American life. He is searching for a job to extend his visa, and hopes for something that will offer moral, more than monetary, satisfaction. Vaguely, he thinks it may be time to reconnect with his homeland.
"I'm a very different person from when I left my home country," Mr. Venot said. "To make myself feel better, I say I'm a citizen of the world, but I don't feel comfortable anywhere. Maybe if I go to Spain and you ask me in three years, I'll say I feel Spanish."
While some students hope to settle in the United States permanently, others plan to return home, but not yet.
Ms. Demirhan, who studied psychology and economics, estimates that she needs a decade working in this country to secure a job back home at the vice-presidential level, crucial if she hopes to influence decisions in Turkey's tradition-bound, hierarchical culture. She will start work at Credit Suisse-First Boston in New York this summer, and figures "they'll have to see something really magical in me" to sponsor her for a work visa.
Astari Daenuwy, an Indonesian student at the University of Virginia, also scoured job fairs and the Internet for an opening. Given her country's political and economic turmoil, she said, "If I go home, I can't really do anything with what I have now."
Recruiters from multinational consulting firms were delighted to learn that Ms. Daenuwy, whose English is fluent and unaccented, spoke Indonesian. Once she revealed she was Indonesian, however, their interest dimmed.
"But you do have friends in your major," she remembers one recruiter suggesting. "We'd love to hear from them."
Her only offer came from the nonprofit U.S.-Indonesia Society, based in Washington. Ms. Daenuwy has until fall to persuade her new bosses to sponsor her for a six-year work visa, of which the Immigration and Naturalization Service issues only 195,000 a year. Aside from the considerable paperwork sponsorship entails, it also costs an employer more than $1,000 in government fees.
For Mr. Saadeh, whose family lives in Geneva, the senior-year job hunt proved disillusioning. The friendliness and sense of inclusion that opened him up as an undergraduate fell away, with recruiters from several companies declining résumés from international students. He eventually landed a job with Dell Computer, which, with the technology sector's downturn, fell through just before graduation.
Ms. Shaath, who hopes to attend graduate school in Chicago, at first expected to feel bitter about her parents' insistence that she spend a year with them in Jeddah. When she left for college, they feared she would fall in love with her independence and never return. Now, she says she wants to go home.
"I'm attached to my family and roots," Ms. Shaath said. "I think if I stayed on for graduate school now, I'd definitely lose a part of myself."
Student with TD Status not a California Resident for Tuition Purposes
The court in Carlson v. Reed, No. 99-56171 (9th Cir. May 8, 2001), determined that a student in TD (Treaty Dependent under NAFTA) status lacks the legal capacity to establish domicile in the US, and so is not eligible for classification as a California state resident for tuition purposes.