What Faculty
Can and Should Do
to Help Anxious International Students
Isaac
M. Colbert
Since the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, our international students and
visitors have felt tremendous pressures and growing anxiety. It is
useful to highlight some of the circumstances since then that have
added to these pressures. Among them have been:
- Heightened scrutiny of visa applications, especially for
students who are citizens of, or who were born in, the 25 "special
registration" countries flagged by the U.S. government, most of
which have large Muslim populations;
- Requirement for students from these countries to report to
local INS offices for "special registration," which includes
fingerprinting and a lengthy interview;
- Delay for a handful of MIT students for additional scrutiny of
their visas, with further delay by a U.S. State Department
"administrative review" for a smaller number;
- Implementation of the new Student and Exchange Visitor
Information System (SEVIS), with significantly increased
information reporting and student tracking demands; and
- Heightened potential for additional conflict in the Middle
East and on the Korean peninsula.
In light of all this, students may be looking to faculty for
advice and counsel about complex visa matters or about their personal
anxieties. Although you are not expected to have all the answers, you
can be helpful by pointing students towards a number of available
resources not yet widely known and by taking advantage of them
yourself. These include Websites and briefings for up-to-date
information, as well as the Institute's compliance with new visa
regulations.
Websites
Several websites publish information of relevance for the entire
MIT community.
International Students Office web.mit.edu/iso/www/
The site publishes up-to-date information about visa regulations and
requirements, as well as FAQs in response to questions already raised
by international students.
International Scholars Office web.mit.edu/scholars/
The site posts up-to-date information for scholars about visa
regulations and requirements.
Committee on Community web.mit.edu/community/
Giving broad consideration to institutional and individual
responsibilities during times of crisis, the site makes specific
recommendations and identifies resources for the MIT community.
Briefings
For information on student- and scholar-focused briefings on visa
requirements (sponsored by the Chancellor, Provost, and Vice
President for Research, and Dean for Graduate Students), check the
related Websites or the Graduate Student News (both print and online
versions) for schedules.
For briefings on community expectations sponsored by the Committee
on Community, refer to the committee's Website, or Tech Talk (print
and online) for schedule information.
New Regulations
Faculty can also be helpful by being aware of a few essential
facts about ongoing compliance with the new visa regulations:
- Every student and visiting scholar, and their dependents, must
be issued a new visa document by August 1, 2003. Currently, the
International Students Office is working with student
administrators in each department to schedule data collection and
entry for each student.
- Retroactive actions of any sort are effectively impossible for
international students with the new SEVIS reporting system. This
presents a genuine challenge for timeliness of funding decisions,
late registration and registration changes, medical leaves, and
other actions that we have become accustomed to recording or
changing after the fact. We want to avoid creating two systems,
one for international students and one for everyone else.
- Some students will be delayed outside of the U.S. for added
visa scrutiny. Some will be delayed for a short time, while others
may be subject to extended scrutiny and delay. Your departmental
administration has in hand a set of recommendations for responding
to these circumstances. Please refer to my Memorandum of February
6, 2003, with attached recommendations approved by the Academic
Council.
- While the International Students Office and the International
Scholars Office can help with questions about federal regulations,
most student questions about accommodating their individual
problems can best be addressed within the department.
- Newly admitted international students may need specific
encouragement and outreach to get them here. They should be
encouraged strongly to start the visa process as early as possible
and should be asked to keep your department informed about any
complications they encounter.
Our international students are a vital part of the MIT family, and
we all share responsibility to support them through these difficult
times.