University electronically tracks foreign students

The University has started using a new electronic system to report information on international students to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said Mary Idzior, director of visa services for the University's general counsel.

The INS originally set a deadline of Jan. 31 for schools to begin reporting information, but the deadline was extended until tomorrow. The University started complying with the regulations on Jan. 30, Idzior said.

Because of a timeline set by last year's Patriot Act bill — passed in response to the Sept. 11 attacks — the University must forward information on all international students and visiting faculty to the INS by Aug. 1.

Schools that fail to disclose the information properly may not be allowed to accept international students.

Until August, the University is required only to report new students or visiting scholars and to report changes in the status of any current international students using the system, Idzior said.

Through the new Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, SEVIS, the INS will track specific attributes of international scholars, such as enrollment, field of study, name and address changes, full-time status and graduation date. Date of arrival and port of entry will also be checked.

While the reporting method will be different, the new regulations do not substantially change the information required. The only new data the University will share is information on disciplinary action as a result of a criminal conviction.

The regulations will apply to all students or faculty on an F, J or M-type visa. Most students at the University are on an F1 student visa, Idzior said.

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Because the University receives most new students in the fall, the visa services office has made few entries into the system thus far. The graduate school received a "handful" of new students for the spring, and those students were entered into the system, Idzior said.

The University typically receives several hundred visiting scholars during the academic year on J-type visas — a visa for students who, after graduation, plan to immediately return to their country of origin — and all newly arrived scholars are now being entered into the system, she said.

By Aug. 1, the University will be required to enter all students into the SEVIS system and to print new forms for each student."We're going to do it gradually over the course of the year," Idzior said.

The Office of Information Technology has set up a series of interfaces that will transfer necessary information from the PeopleSoft administrative management database to a program at visa services, which will then forward data to the INS, said Ted Bross, OIT's manager of data integration services.