Foreign student tracking system may not be fully ready by January

The Immigration and Naturalization Service needs to properly train agency employees and step up oversight of contractors if it hopes to fully implement a new automated system for tracking foreign students living in the United States by its January deadline, the Justice Department's inspector general said Wednesday.

The INS has said its Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) will be fully implemented by Jan.30, but the IG and education officials said there are not enough resources to get the system working efficiently by that time.

"While SEVIS will be technically operational by that date, we have concerns about whether the INS will be able to complete all the steps necessary to ensure full and proper implementation by Jan. 30," Justice IG Glenn Fine said at a hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims.

"We are firmly on track to meet the January deadline," said Janis Sposato, assistant deputy executive associate commissioner for INS' immigration services division. "We are determined to meet that deadline."

SEVIS is designed to replace the paper-based system the agency now uses to track foreign students in the United States, eliminating delays in notification by informing all parties simultaneously once an INS decision on a visa application is completed. Although the State Department is responsible for issuing student visas to foreign students who want to study in the United States, the INS must monitor each student's stay in the country and determine which schools are eligible to accept foreign students.

About 900 schools are already using SEVIS. Under the system, when a foreign student applies to enroll at a school, the institution enters the student's information into the electronic system. Designated INS officials, school officials, certain State Department employees and law enforcement authorities will have access to SEVIS to monitor foreign students' attendance records and other activities while they are studying in the country.

In July, the INS published rules in the Federal Register allowing certain accredited private and public schools that enroll foreign students to begin using the system. All schools that enroll foreign students must be reviewed and recertified by the agency by the end of January.

Sposato told the House panel that the agency would conduct on-site visits to all schools enrolling foreign students to make sure the schools are accredited and that school officials know how to use SEVIS. The agency has also hired three contractors to conduct the investigations, she said.

But Fine said he is concerned about the INS' ability to adequately train employees and oversee contractors conducting the visits. A May IG report found that designated INS employees in four district offices were spending only 20 percent or less of their time certifying and monitoring schools, Fine said. He also said the looming deadline could lead to shoddy on-site visits by contractors.

Sposato said the agency is trying to get the system up and running as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality. She said the agency would prioritize site visits, going first to schools whose accreditation credentials might not be up to par with more established institutions. Some schools, depending on their accreditation and reputation, will be able to fully use the system before the contractor conducts an on-site investigation.

Catheryn Cotten, director of the international office at Duke University, said Duke did not have enough staff to enter all the data about its foreign students into SEVIS in time to meet the deadline. "We only have five people working on that project," she said. Duke University, which participated in the SEVIS pilot program, has more than 1,200 foreign students and 1,000 foreign professors and researchers.

Sposato said to meet the Jan. 30 deadline, schools only need to worry about entering information about new foreign students into the system. She said the agency expects it will take the better part of the year for schools to enter data about students continuing their education.

Cotten and Fine both praised the INS for the progress it has made so far to work out the kinks in SEVIS and get the system up and running quickly, but said the lack of training and guidance from the agency worries them.

"Unless the INS devotes sufficient resources and effort to implement and use SEVIS effectively, many of its current problems in tracking and monitoring foreign students who come to the United States to attend school would continue to exist," Fine said.