Some worry Sen. Grassley’s proposal might hurt STEM advancement

WASHINGTON - A little-noticed bill introduced in Congress earlier this month by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is now getting attention from university officials and lobbyists from Iowa to Washington, D.C., for its potential effect on student visas and U.S. immigration.

Grassley, a Republican, on Sept. 10 introduced the Student Visa Integrity Act to crack down on fraud and abuse he said are rife in visa programs that are riddled with loopholes. Many of the 19 terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had exploited U.S. immigration laws to enter the country on student visas, as had the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The root of the problem, Grassley said, is that federal customs and immigrations have been unable to keep pace as the country's student visa program, while the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, has increased in popularity.

Grassley cited statistics from the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution that showed the number of foreign students on F-1 visas in the United States has jumped from 110,000 in 2001 to 524,000 in 2012, and he said his bill is based on past proposals that won bipartisan Senate support.

'The technology and oversight of the student visa program has insufficiently improved,' Grassley said in his Sept. 10 floor speech. 'Now, 13 years after 9/11, we have sham schools setting up in strip malls without real classrooms. We have foreign nationals entering the U.S. with the intent to study, but then disappear and never attend a real class …

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'It's time to close the loopholes and clamp down on schools that have a poor track record with regard to foreign students.”

In 2012, Grassley and Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer and Claire McCaskill jointly released a Government Accountability Office report they had requested after a California university gave F-1 visas to undercover agents who posed nationals even though they stated they had no intention of attending class.

The founder of the school was convicted in March of this year of counts ranging from conspiracy to commit visa fraud to laundering money and harboring illegal aliens, the San Jose Mercy reported.

Among the schools investigated in that 2012 report, some operated as flight schools but were not accredited by the Federal Aviation Administration. As Feinstein noted at the time, two of the 9/11 hijackers successfully had applied for student visas to take classes from flight schools.

But at Iowa's universities, officials who oversee international programs are urging caution. While mostly supportive of Grassley's ideas, they warn that too much of an overreaction could be detrimental to recruiting legitimate and talented foreign students.

Lee Seedorff, senior associate director of the University of Iowa's International Programs and International Student and Scholar Services, pronounced herself 'supportive, while being a little confused.” She said several of Grassley's proposals already exist as law or policy, for example.

'But increasing or hastening those repercussions for cases of these sham schools that Sen. Grassley mentions isn't a bad thing,” Seedorff said. 'These sham schools do exist, and the ability for Homeland Security to more easily track and shut down such schools would be a benefit to everyone.

'It not only has the potential to increase security, but also protects the international students who unwittingly enroll in such places, are charged tuition and receive little oversight and in some cases little academic interaction, then may end up losing a lot of money and possibly legal status as a result of being hooked in by unscrupulous schools.”

'Certainly we acknowledge that the laws pertaining to student visas need to be revisited from time to time,” said Annette Hacker, Iowa State University's news service director. 'A number of the updates being proposed (for) the Student and Exchange Visitor Program are reasonable and shouldn't pose any problems. As with any piece of legislation, definitions would need to be clarified to ensure that there would not be any unintended consequences as a result.”

In Washington, the Association of American Universities, an organization that represents universities in federal matters - and whose membership includes both the University of Iowa and Iowa State University - Vice President for Public Affairs Barry Toiv said the AAU still is studying Grassley's bill.

While the organization supports more scrutiny over fraud and abuse, Toiv also called foreign students 'critical” to efforts to improve the U.S. work force and economy.

'We want to make sure that whatever system is in place doesn't discourage students from wanting to study in the U.S.,” Toiv told The Gazette.

Among those who are more skeptical is Grassley's Senate colleague, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who also chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Harkin said Grassley hasn't approached him about the bill, even though it presumably would have to go through Harkin's committee.

Harkin noted the Senate already passed an immigration crackdown bill last year that remains bottled up in the Republican-controlled House.

'Obviously we do need to crack down on fraud and abuse of visa documents,” Harkin said last week. 'But we should also make it easier to attract students from around the world to the United States. I have long said one of the best things we can do is encourage foreign students to come here and interact with Americans, study here and learn our values. And then they go home. That's a good thing.”

Harkin recalled a congressional trip he took to a village in Africa - 'in the middle of nowhere” - where the local tribe chieftain proudly introduced himself as a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.

'You don't want to stop that, and you don't want to put up roadblocks to that,” Harkin said. 'You don't want to put a chilling effect on students who want to come here and study, or universities who become scared of making a misstep and getting fined.”

The SEVIS program is funded by fees - not taxpayer money - and students pay fees to have their visas processed.

Grassley said he had considered the effect of his bill on STEM recruiting efforts, and would not have proposed the legislation if he had thought it would be harmful.

'The motive is just to know who comes and doesn't come, and to check their backgrounds,” he said. 'That seems to be something you'd do for almost anybody coming into the country - that's the whole point of the visas program …

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What the bill says

Grassley's bill would require schools to:

' Be accredited by an appropriate accrediting body before accepting foreign students in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program program

' Establish federal authority to suspend schools from the program if there is suspicion of fraud

' Increase penalties for fraud

' Require background checks on some school officials

' Require that they be U.S. nationals or legal permanent residents

' Require online training of some school officials every three years

' Permanently bar school officials who are guilty of fraud from filing future student visa petitions

' Require federal officials to develop an updated tracking system for foreign students.