Imagine having to notify the government any time you wanted to change your major, drop a class or go home for a break. It sounds ludicrous and restrictive but as a result of new federal legislation invasion of privacy, bureaucratic hoop-jumping and an increasing threat of arbitrary deportation have become a reality for the international student community both here at UW-Madison and throughout the nation.
SEVIS, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, is a national Internet-based monitoring system for all non-resident students studying in the United States. SEVIS is run by the Immigration and Naturalization Services, but it essentially allows a wide variety of government offices to use institutions of learning to gain access to student information. SEVIS was forced through as part of the USA Patriot Act and came into effect in January 2003. It not only increases the amount of people who have access to student information but substantially increases the amount of required information calling for an extensive background check, and what is more ominous, anything else deemed elevant"" by the government such as personal ""books, records, papers, documents and other items.""
SEVIS is disturbing on a variety of levels. On an individual level, it strips previous legislation, mainly the Family Education Records Protection Act designed to protect privacy and imposes inappropriately harsh punishments (mainly deportation) for small errors. On a technical level, it is full of systematic errors, which cause extremely long delays in visa processing and can lead to inappropriate deportation. Finally, it is symbolic of a wave of legislation that creates an intimidating and hostile atmosphere reminiscent of McCarthyism and violates the civil liberties and freedoms of all U.S. residents.
Under SEVIS, students can be deported for the following reasons: failure to report an address change to the INS within 10 days, dropping below a full-time credit load without prior permission or an unauthorized major change. Even when students follow the rules to the letter they can still get into trouble due to SEVIS's extremely slow processing of information. For example a student could apply for a visa at the proper time but due to delays, their current visa could run out while they are waiting-leaving them subject to deportation! Additionally, if students leave the United States to visit home for a break or for a family emergency they can subsequently be denied re-entry to the country-and thus the ability to finish their degrees.
SEVIS is a mandatory program but receives minimal federal funding and therefore has led to the absurd conclusion of international students paying for their own ""monitoring."" Currently a UW-Madison task force is investigating more equitable ways to pay for the system. Across the country, however, a majority of international students have been unjustly charged a fee for a program that is supposedly intended to be for ""the good and security"" of all U.S. citizens.
Technical errors and privacy invasion are not even the most important issues at stake-international students can also be sanctioned or deported for ""misconduct,"" a term broad enough to include political activity or even the protesting of SEVIS itself. These loopholes within the system are fundamental violations of freedom of speech and assembly and can act as an informal form of ""silencing"" the international student body-a dynamic group who bring alternative visions to campuses and the country.
SEVIS is only one part of the more comprehensive and the more invasive USA Patriot Act. The Patriot Act extends police surveillance powers, expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic political groups, allows citizens to be investigated without probable cause if it is for ""intelligence purposes"" and permits non-citizen suspects convicted of no crime to be detained indefinitely without judicial review. The Patriot Act also leaves the option for a SEVIS like monitoring system to be expanded to any student, citizen or not, involved in political activity which the government deems ""threatening."" This type of legislation threatens our ability to work for change within society and acts to silence voices of dissent.
At the present moment all of the major candidates for the next presidency-George W. Bush, John Kerry and John Edwards voted for the Patriot Act. With the Patriot Act II currently in the works, it is vital that all U.S. residents, especially college students, fight to keep a dialogue about these issues on the national agenda, advocate the roll back of this civil liberty violating legislation and exercise our right to protest while we still have it.
