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Foreign Students Jailed for Light Course Loads
Several foreign students who registered with U.S. immigration officials in December were arrested because their course loads were not heavy enough. The students, who were not accused of any crime, complied with a new antiterrorism law requiring that men over sixteen from specific, primarily Muslim, countries who are in the United States on temporary student, tourist, or work visas be fingerprinted, photographed, and interviewed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. But when immigration officials in Colorado discovered that some students were enrolled in fewer than the twelve credit hours generally required by law to maintain a student visa, they were jailed. At least one of the students turned out not to be in violation of the law—he had dropped a course with permission from his college, something that international students may do one time—but he was held in jail for two days, until he was able to post bail.
The registrations may be causing more problems than they are solving, says Larry Bell, director of international student and scholar services at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where two of the detentions occurred. "We are detaining and in some sense harassing people who would otherwise be friendly toward the United States," explains Bell, noting that international students and scholars have already undergone a screening process to qualify for visas. Faculty members fitting the antiterrorism law's criteria must also register in person.
In a separate incident, a student in Florida was jailed for four days and threatened with deportation because he was a day late in registering with immigration officials. The student, whose visa was valid, explained that he put off going to the immigration office because the reporting deadline, December 16, coincided with a class project deadline.
NAFSA, an association of international educators, issued a statement decrying the registration program, saying that it has unfairly targeted individuals based on their ethnic, national, or religious background and calling the treatment of some students "profoundly inappropriate and disheartening."
"Among the academic community's deep concerns in the post-September 11 period is the sharply heightened scrutiny of international students," comments Robert O'Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia. "While some closer monitoring might be warranted, recent incidents such as those in Colorado and Florida not only severely disrupt the lives of the targeted students, but could well discourage many others from abroad whose presence could hardly pose any risk to our security from studying in the United States." O'Neil is chair of the AAUP's Special Committee on Academic Freedom and National Security in Times of Crisis.
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