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Licensing Proposal Threatens U.S. Research
By Thomas J. Meal
Academic leaders and higher education groups, including the AAUP, have expressed dismay at a U.S. Commerce Department proposal to require licensing of all foreign nationals who have access to export-controlled technology, including equipment or knowledge widely available overseas. Researchers say that the requirement would force them to apply for licenses to work with commonplace equipment, even if the research involved is itself exempt from export control.
At a workshop held in May by the Commerce Department and the National Academies to discuss the proposal, University of Maryland, College Park, president C. D. Mote, Jr., argued that the proposed changes would give government regulators the "nearly incomprehensible" task of monitoring all new technologies to determine if they were covered by the requirement. Potential costs and delays would result in cancellation of much research, argued Mote, since the monitoring burden—to categorize all technology that researchers may use, to identify the nationalities of all potential users, and to obtain licenses for any foreign national who might come into contact with possibly restricted equipment or information—would, in practice, fall heavily on university legal staff and research administrators. Representing the semiconductor industry, workshop participant Cynthia Johnson added that the commerce department "has never demonstrated a need or presented a national security justification" for the policy.
Opposition to the policy also reflects academic and industry fears over declining U.S. recruitment of international science and engineering talent. Foreign nationals applying to U.S. graduate programs fell 28 percent in 2003, and dropped another 5 percent in 2004. A National Academies report issued in May, Policy Implications of International Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars in the United States (available online at www.nap.edu/books/0309096138/html/), advises U.S. institutions to counter the deteriorating climate for foreign nationals by expanding efforts both to recruit internationally and to document foreign scholars' research and workforce roles. The National Academies were created by the federal government to provide advice on scientific and technological matters.
Also in May, a group of higher education associations including the AAUP issued recommendations on revising the U.S. visa system to remove barriers that make it difficult for international students to study here and that create the impression that they are not welcome in the United States.
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