The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s plans to approximately double international student visa fees to fund surveillance on those students must be opposed.
Increasing the fees to finance government monitoring programs sends a highly discouraging message to potential international students.
Not only will these prospective students be forced to pay more, the money they pay will be used by the government to watch what they do.
International students make up only about 3 percent of all non-immigrant visa holders, and there is little hard evidence of these students being a threat to national security.
Six months after Sept. 11, two of the men that flew into the World Trade Center were posthumously granted student visas to flight school ““ but they had obviously completed their extensive plans without the aid of the visas. Since then, the government has tightened security.
International students should not be targeted by policies that indirectly stigmatize them, as they are already forced to undergo a lengthy, complicated and expensive process for the chance to study in the U.S. ““ a process that should prove they are coming to this country for legitimate reasons.
Raising visa costs will only make the United States less appealing to international students, who will feel unwelcome and more inclined to explore other countries that have not had this increase in hostility.
Attracting these students is critical for world-class schools such as UCLA, which compete to boast the best and brightest students and researchers.
Turning away the world’s intellectuals deprives this country of a valuable asset in recruiting potential immigrants who would be highly productive for American society and the economy.
Further, many students who are not naturalized return to their original country with a firsthand experience of America, which they can recount to their peers.
Welcoming these students is crucial to American foreign policy, as it encourages dialogue and exchange across international boundaries ““ helping to dispel misconceptions and hostilities by increasing understanding and shared experience.
Instead, many students won’t bother attempting to study here, and the ones who do will be greeted with the image of America as a country bent on keeping a close watch on people, rather than a world leader in the realm of personal freedom.
The planned visa increases will be used to support a database that was created after the 2001 attacks. Assuming a database is not unreasonably expensive to maintain, the money seems to be heading in the direction of feeding another vague, bureaucratic surveillance program.
After the attacks, heightened security policies and stricter visa procedures led to a dramatic decrease in foreign student enrollment growth, and it was only within the past few years that the trend seemed to return to the same growth seen prior to 2001.
The planned fee hikes for international student visas would be a setback for recruiting top talent to the United States and could potentially revert enrollment growth of foreign students to the stagnant rates in the wake of Sept. 11.