Ali Reza Alemozafar says it would be “counterproductive” for the United States to exclude students from countries that are thought to support terrorism.
“I’ve talked with students from Iran, and I’ve talked with people from Iran who are not students,” says the third-year graduate student in chemical engineering. “And the students are the truly open-minded members of their society, who really want to learn and to change things. If we kick them out, they can’t come here to learn about Western democracy and philosophy and take it back to their country.”
Alemozafar, a U.S. citizen of Iranian heritage, helped to organize a November rally in White Plaza to protest a proposal (since withdrawn) by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, ’55, for a six-month moratorium on visas for students from Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria and Sudan. The following day, the California State Assembly’s committee on higher education met at Stanford’s Bechtel International Center for an informational hearing about student visas. The Golden State enrolls 74,000 international students in its colleges and universities and was caught in the national spotlight in the aftermath of September 11, when federal authorities learned that one of the 19 hijackers had entered the United States on a student visa to study in California.
Since then, the U.S. government has compiled a list of some 5,000 men between the ages of 18 and 33 who have entered the country on nonimmigrant visas since January 2000. Although there are no official estimates of how many students are on that list, a survey last fall by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers revealed that the the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Immigration and Naturalization Service had contacted administrators on more than 200 campuses, asking questions about students.
Although one Stanford student, a U.S. citizen, agreed to be interviewed by the FBI, registrar Roger Printup says he hasn’t gotten any official calls—yet. “I have not been contacted by any agency for private information, and I have not been asked for any lists of students by country of origin or by ethnicity. I haven’t even received requests for names of Middle Eastern students majoring in aerospace engineering, which is what I thought we might get.”
Printup and other administrators are working hard to support the 2,381 graduate students and 332 undergraduates who make up the international student population at Stanford. “Since September 11, we’re concerned about students being targeted without any basis in fact, and concerned about assumptions being made because of where they come from, their religion or the color of their skin,” Printup says. “‘Looks suspicious to me’ isn’t good enough.”
Under the terms of the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, colleges are required only to provide federal agencies with the kind of information found in a campus telephone directory—name, address, phone number, major. If federal authorities want to ask the University additional questions about a student’s courses, grades or what he wrote on an admissions application, a subpoena has to be issued by a California state court. “Unless a person has what the law refers to as a legitimate educational interest, like a faculty member or adviser, student records are private,” Printup says.
Representatives from Stanford and the University of California met with Feinstein last fall, and she soon withdrew her visa proposal. Nevertheless, many international students stayed on campus over winter break rather than return to their home countries and risk not being able to return. A student may continue his studies with an expired visa stamp in his passport, but if he leaves the United States, he cannot re-enter without a new visa.
Although international students account for only 2 percent of the foreign nationals who enter the country every year, Bechtel Center director John Pearson says he fears INS agents may “overreact” to increasing criticism from Congress by requesting more interviews with students. So Pearson advises students to carry the phone number of a hotline set up by the American Civil Liberties Union, and he has offered to host and sit in on any interviews students agree to have with federal officials.
Pending congressional legislation would require colleges and universities to report on international students who do not show up for classes, and Pearson thinks that’s “entirely reasonable.” But he recalls the Cold War years, when FBI agents frequently canvassed campuses in search of information about scholars from the Soviet Union, and says he knows that students can develop mistrust of centers like Bechtel. “So there’s a sense of uncertainty about our relationship with our students, and they must feel comfortable that we are advisers, as opposed to agents of the INS.”
