Follow-up Review on the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Efforts to Track Foreign Students in the United States through the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System

Report Number I-2003-003
March 2003

The INS has several responsibilities related to foreign students. These responsibilities include determining the eligibility of a school to receive foreign students, inspecting the documents of foreign students entering the United States, monitoring foreign students to ensure that they maintain their visa status, facilitating the removal of foreign students once their status ends, and approving transfers, practical training, and program extensions for foreign students enrolled in vocational programs.⁹ The INS also is responsible for processing the requests of aliens in the United States who want to acquire student status.

In 1983, the INS implemented the Student and Schools System (STSC). STSC contained basic information on INS-certified schools and the foreign students who entered the United States with I-20s issued by these schools. With respect to foreign students, STSC only contained I-20 information; it did not indicate whether foreign students actually enrolled in the school or include information on students' academic progress. The INS instead required schools to manually collect data on foreign students attending their school, including names, addresses, dates of birth, visa classifications, student status, courses of study, academic disciplinary actions taken, and dates and reasons for termination. Schools were not required to report this information regularly to the INS, but were required to provide this information to the INS when requested to do so. As a result, although the INS knew how many foreign students entered the United States, it was unable to keep track of them to ensure that they complied with their visa requirements.

The discovery that one of the terrorists involved in the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was in the United States on an expired student visa resulted in the formation of a multi-agency task force in June 1995 to review the INS's process for monitoring foreign students and exchange visitors. On September 30, 1996, Congress enacted Public Law 104-208, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which mandated that the INS develop a system to collect foreign student information electronically from colleges and universities. This requirement did not include vocational or language schools. IIRIRA also mandated that the INS establish a fee, to be imposed on foreign students and exchange visitors, to fund the system.

In June 1997, the INS implemented a pilot project, the Coordinated Interagency Partnership Regulating International Students (CIPRIS), to test the concept of an electronic reporting system. According to the INS, the CIPRIS pilot project was designed as a "throw-away" program to test the feasibility of electronic reporting. Although the CIPRIS pilot project officially ended in October 1999, the project continued operating as a prototype pending the development of a nationwide system. Subsequent to the pilot project, the design of the new system changed to an Internet-based system. In July 2001, the INS changed the name of the system to SEVIS to distinguish between the two systems, which functioned similarly, but differed in design.

CIPRIS, and later SEVIS, encountered opposition from some school association lobbying groups, who primarily objected to the imposition of a foreign student processing fee. Because the INS was relying on fee collections to fund SEVIS, the delays in establishing the fee process affected the development of SEVIS.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks drew renewed attention to foreign students when it was determined that several of the terrorists either were in the United States on student visas, had recently changed their visa status to a student status, or had attended flight schools. On October 26, 2001, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act (Public Law 107-56), which required the INS to fully implement SEVIS by January 1, 2003. The law also required the INS to include information on each foreign student's or exchange program visitor's port of entry and date of entry, and it expanded the types of schools required to participate in SEVIS to include flight schools, language training schools, and vocational schools. Congress provided $36.8 million in appropriations to fully fund the SEVIS implementation.

The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-173), enacted on May 8, 2002, required additional information on foreign students to be captured electronically, such as the issuance of an I-20, the issuance of a visa, and the registration and enrollment of the student at the school.¹⁰ It also required schools to report to the INS, no later than 30 days after the school registration deadline, the failure of an alien to enroll or commence participation in an INS-approved school, or a designated exchange visitor program. The law also established a transition program for issuing foreign student and exchange visitor visas pending full SEVIS implementation.

Since May 2002 the INS has published a series of rules in the Federal Register to implement SEVIS:

• On May 16, 2002, the INS published a proposed rule that established the regulatory framework for SEVIS and set a mandatory compliance date of January 30, 2003, for schools to use SEVIS. The proposed rule recognized that the compulsory date of January 30, 2003, might pose challenges for schools and solicited comments from the schools regarding the amount of time the schools believed would be necessary to convert to SEVIS.

• On July 1, 2002, the INS published an interim rule allowing schools to preliminarily enroll in SEVIS provided that they met specified criteria. For these schools, the INS waived the requirement of an on-site review as a condition for approval. The preliminary enrollment period was effective from July 1, 2002, until the INS published its interim certification rule.

• On September 25, 2002, the INS published an interim certification rule requiring that all schools not already approved for SEVIS during the preliminary enrollment period undergo a certification review, including an on-site review, prior to enrollment in SEVIS. The rule required schools to enter all continuing students into SEVIS by the end of the next academic cycle. The rule also gave the INS the option of deferring the initial on-site review requirement and allowing conditional enrollment in SEVIS for accredited schools or for public secondary schools.

• On December 11, 2002, the INS published the final version of its May 16, 2002, proposed SEVIS rule.¹¹ The rule established August 1, 2003, as the date by which schools must issue SEVIS I-20s to all of their continuing students. The rule became effective on January 1, 2003.

SEVIS Implementation Schedule

While the INS established January 30, 2003, as the mandatory implementation date by which all schools were required to begin issuing SEVIS I-20s to their new students, the INS subsequently extended this date to February 15, 2003. During January 2003, as more schools and foreign exchange visitor program sponsors began to access SEVIS, technical problems developed. Users had difficulty logging onto SEVIS, and as the volume of users grew, the system became increasingly sluggish. The INS also was struggling to complete its certification reviews of those schools that had submitted their applications by November 15, 2002.¹² Until the INS completed these reviews, these schools would not be able to accept any new foreign students.

On January 29, 2003, the INS issued a statement extending the mandatory compliance date from January 30, 2003, to February 15, 2003. During this 2-week extension, the INS planned to correct the system's problems and complete its certification reviews of those schools that applied by November 15, 2002. ¹³

The INS is requiring all schools to use SEVIS for I-20s issued to new students after February 15, 2003, and it is giving schools until August 1, 2003, to reissue I-20s to their continuing students. Until then, the INS will continue to send the non-SEVIS I-20s to a contract firm for data entry into its prior database, STSC.

At the time of our original review, STSC contained approximately 72,000 active INS-approved schools. Accordingly, our report in May 2002 questioned whether the INS would be able to properly review and re-certify all of the schools prior to the congressionally-mandated full implementation date of January 1, 2003. The INS subsequently acknowledged to us that it believed the number of active schools in STSC was grossly overstated. According to its website, the INS estimates that 90 percent of the 72,000 INS-approved schools included in STSC were either inactive or no longer eligible for approval. The website states:

It's true that 72,000 schools have at one time or another participated in the foreign student program. The vast majority of those institutions are not currently active participants. Many are no longer in business. Many only participated on a one-time basis. Many were public elementary and middle schools that can no longer sponsor foreign exchange students…INS recently completed a study of the schools that sponsored foreign students during the past three years. We determined that 7,400 schools are actively involved in bringing foreign students to the United States.

Prior OIG Review Findings Relating to the Certification Process

Our original review was critical of the INS's process for certifying schools as eligible to accept foreign students, and identified the following deficiencies in the certification process:

• The certification and monitoring of schools at the district offices were low-priority collateral duties,

• INS adjudicators responsible for reviewing and approving school applications were not conducting on-site reviews of schools or personally interviewing DSOs to verify that the schools were bona fide,

• INS adjudicators received no formal training and lacked clear guidelines relating to the certification process, and

• The INS did not periodically review approved schools for continued eligibility.

Because of these deficiencies, we concluded that the INS's STSC database was unreliable, incomplete, and inaccurate. Our sample of 200 schools selected from the STSC database identified at least 86 that appeared to be inactive. We identified other schools that were approved and active but not entered into STSC. Additionally, we identified numerous instances where the school addresses and names had changed but were not updated in STSC. We noted in our original report that as a result of the lack of attention to the program, fraud had become pervasive.

In implementing SEVIS, the INS stated that it would address several of the deficiencies we identified by:

• Requiring all schools to reapply for approval to accept foreign students,

• Requiring schools to undergo a re-certification review every two years,

• Directing INS district office managers to dedicate sufficient personnel to perform the certifications,

• Hiring contract firms to conduct on-site reviews of schools in order to verify that schools are bona fide and are complying with INS's records and reporting requirements, and

• Providing initial formal training for district office adjudicators and developing an on-line training module for future training.

SEVIS School Certification Process

The INS decided to require all schools previously approved to resubmit applications. To facilitate this application review, the INS instituted a two-phased process for certifying schools. In the first phase, effective July 1, 2002, through September 24, 2002, the INS established a preliminary enrollment period for schools that met certain requirements. Schools could apply during this period if they were:

• Accredited by certain accrediting organizations,¹⁴

• Continuously approved by the INS for the last three years for the enrollment of F (Academic or language) or M (vocational) students, and

• Not a flight school.

These schools were required to submit an electronic I-17 application through SEVIS.¹⁵ Senior INS officers assigned to headquarters adjudicated those applications submitted during the preliminary enrollment period. The INS deferred the required on-site review for these schools.¹⁶ According to the INS, it approved 1,418 schools during the preliminary enrollment period.

During the second phase, starting on September 25, 2002, the INS accepted applications from other schools. To ensure completion of the certification review by the mandatory compliance date, the INS in its interim SEVIS rule "strongly encouraged" schools to submit their I-17 applications by November 15, 2002. These schools also were required to submit an electronic I-17 application through SEVIS. Once the application was received, INS headquarters directed one of its three contract firms to conduct an on-site review. INS district office staff adjudicated these applications, using the on-site review reports submitted by the contract investigators and supporting documentation submitted by DSOs to determine whether or not to approve the school for access to SEVIS.

The INS also requires that schools be re-certified every two years. The INS does not intend to publish its rule implementing the 2-year re-certification requirement until after all schools are using SEVIS. According to the INS, SEVIS will automatically generate reminders to both the appropriate INS district office and school when the certification period is expiring.

9. Aliens are "in-status" when they meet their visa requirements. To be in-status, foreign students must actively pursue a full course of study at an INS-approved school.

10. When an alien is accepted to a program offered by an INS-approved school, that school issues an INS form I-20 to the student. The alien presents the I-20 to a consular officer when applying for a student visa as proof of acceptance to an INS-approved program. The alien also presents the I-20 to an inspector upon entry to the United States.

11. On December 12, 2002, the Department of State issued an interim final rule setting forth the same compliance dates for foreign exchange visitor program sponsors. Although the INS is responsible for monitoring the status of exchange visitors, the Department of State is responsible for approving and monitoring exchange visitor program sponsors.

12. The September 25, 2002, interim certification rule stated, "In order to be reviewed by the [INS] and be granted access to SEVIS prior to the mandatory compliance date, schools are strongly encouraged to submit an electronic Form I-17 to the [INS] no less than 75 days prior to the compliance deadline. The [INS] cannot guarantee timely final action on any Form I-17 petition not filed at least 75 days prior to the SEVIS mandatory compliance deadline."

13. According to the INS's response to this report, it was able to complete its certification reviews of these schools by February 13, 2003.

14. The rule specifies that private elementary and secondary schools must be accredited by an organization holding membership in the Council for the American Private Education or the American Association of Christian Schools, and that postsecondary, language, and vocational schools must be accredited by an accrediting organization approved by the U.S. Department of Education.

15. Form I-17 is a standard INS form used by a school to request approval from the INS to admit nonimmigrant students.

16. The INS's July 1, 2002, interim rule states that all schools granted preliminary enrollment in SEVIS will be required to undergo an on-site review prior to May 2004.