Go Home INS!
By Peter Douglas
Staff Writer

Imagine you're studying abroad in Spain. The sun is shining, the wine is flowing, the beaches are beautiful, and the water is warm. You meet a nice Spanish boy/girl and start enjoying his/her company on a regular basis. It becomes harder and harder to get up in the mornings, since in Spain the fun doesn't start until 3 AM. You've got plenty of credits back at Pomona, so you think, what the hell, I'll drop a class. And then boom, the policia breaks down your door, drags you off to jail, and holds you there for two days until they let you call your parents so they can bail you out. It sounds pretty scary. Of course, this would never happen. There is no John Ashcroft in Spain.

Last December at least six Middle Eastern students in Colorado were jailed when they went to register with the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) for offenses such as failing a class or taking 10 instead of 12 credit hours. They were held for two days without being allowed to make a phone call, and told they were in the deportation process. Here in Southern California the situation was much worse, with an estimated 500 to 700 people jailed in December, many of them students, although the INS won't release any official numbers. All this results from a new program called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, which requires all international students from North Korea and certain Middle Eastern countries to register with the INS by the end of this week. The system also requires every university in the country to give detailed information about every international student it has registered. Many schools are expecting logistical chaos, since the INS software for registering this information is characteristically inefficient.

There are several reasons why everyone at Pomona should be alarmed and outraged by these events. First of all, it is simply frightening that anyone can be arrested and held for two days for not taking enough classes. Reducing your course load isn't a crime, and if it somehow were, it certainly wouldn't a legitimate one. In Colorado the INS later apologized, claiming the incident was a mistake. Holding someone in jail for two days is a pretty serious mistake, and so far neither the INS nor the Justice Department has provided any kind of explanation for why the mistake was made or how it would be prevented in the future.

The incident makes it all too clear that our law enforcement agencies are increasingly willing, post September 11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone they find suspicious, regardless of due process and the rest of the Constitution. The fact that the students are not U.S. citizens and are from countries we believe to be dangerous doesn't make these arrests any les threatening. In theory the US doesn't decide which rights apply to a person based on what he or she looks like, where he is she is from, and how long he or she is staying. If we allow John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge decide who is threatening enough to be locked up, we shouldn't be surprised when that definition includes us or people we care about.

Second, by harassing innocent foreign students we are only worsening our reputation abroad. In many countries, especially the countries these students come from, such as Iran and Syria, the United States is viewed as a corrupt, repressive and evil imperial power. Whether that reputation is deserved or not, it would be nice if the people of the world saw us more favorably.

One easy way for this to happen would be to let foreign students spend four years here, take advantage of our excellent universities, and then return home to tell their compatriots that America is a good place with more to offer than Big Macs and unilateral invasions. If however these students are arrested or harassed by government officials and return home bitter and angry about their experience here, we will be giving people around the world yet another reason to hate us.

Being held unexpectedly for two days is extreme, but currently most students from the Middle East or North Korea have to check in regularly with the INS. Many are being questioned about terrorist activity, and most likely all of them feel the threat of deportation hanging over their heads as they study here. This experience could make America seem much more like a police state than the bastion of freedom we claim to be.

Third, this policy, while it sours the experience of students who are already here, will most likely discourage international students from considering American universities in the future. Meanwhile any school that does not satisfactorily register with the INS cannot register any international students, and many schools that do register will be hesitant to admit students that require such a lengthy and costly process every year. Almost certainly the end result will be fewer foreign students in American schools. This would be a true tragedy, not only because these students could help to improve our image abroad, but also because the presence of foreign students on our campuses is rewarding for everyone involved.

Every year approximately 500,000 foreign students attend American colleges and universities, bringing 12 billion dollars into the American economy. It's not the money that's important though. International students contribute an amazing, if sometimes under acknowledged, amount to both the academic and social aspects of life at Pomona. In a school that often feels insular, students who have grown up on different continents and in different cultures can help to create a much-needed wider perspective. While it doesn't seem likely any time soon, a reduction in the number of international students would be a sharply felt loss. At many other schools without the resources and the commitment to international students Pomona has this loss could be felt by the beginning of next semester.

Obviously the United States has undergone drastic changes since September 11th, as the need for increased national security became all too tragically clear. Some type of reform within our overwhelmed and disorganized immigration system, including our student visa system, is definitely necessary. Arresting students because they dropped a class, however, won't solve the problem. Neither will monitoring students to the point that they feel persecuted. All these methods can accomplish is make it look like the INS is finally getting tough on terrorism, while distracting people from the budgetary and organizational issues that are at the root of the problem. Harsh treatment of international students won't put a dent in terrorism, but it might put a large one in our universities.