IPO staff brace for new US visa monitoring rules

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

ubstantial changes in the legislation governing the issuance of visas to non-U.S. citizens who come to this country to study or to work at universities have the staff at the International Programs Office bracing for an enormous influx in paperwork.

     Foreign student advisor Patricia Vokbus of the IPO told the Faculty Senate Dec. 5 that the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a federal, Web-based tracking system for monitoring non-immigrants visiting the U.S. with F, J or M visas, will require the University to notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service anytime there is a "reportable event" among such visa holders affiliated with the University. Reportable events include address changes, course-load reduction, change or major, or change of name. The system goes into effect Jan. 30 for new foreign students and scholars and in the fall for all current ones.

     "I've seen an awful lot of changes in immigration regulations in the more than 27 years that I've worked as a foreign student advisor, and what I can tell you is that SEVIS is bigger than all of them combined," Vokbus said.

     "[Staff members at the IPO] have always prided ourselves on our advocacy for foreign students," she said. "The reporting requirements that are mandated under SEVIS are going to redefine our job and will represent a dramatic change in the way we work [because] any discretion, any flexibility that we might have had in the past in interpreting regulations, in trying to process papers late for students, will be extremely limited, if it will exist at all.

     "It's essential that the whole University know about SEVIS, try to understand what it means, that everyone understands that this is a University requirement. We are mandated by law to comply. As it happens, the compliance will be housed in International Programs, but it requires cooperation of the entire University community."

     Vokbus said the new regulations will go into effect at the end of this month. As of early December, those regulations had not been made official.

     "Of the things that we are fair-ly confident will be part of the regulations, there are a number of things that the campus community - students, faculty, grad program directors, grad secretaries, everyone - needs to be aware of," she said.

     Full-time status will be essential for foreign students, she said. Undergraduates must be enrolled in at least 12 credit hours per semester and graduate students will need to be enrolled in at least 9 credit hours. In the case of undergraduates, after their first semester, which allows for adjustment difficulties, the only allowable excuse for not completing 12 credits must be a medical one unless the student is in her or his final semester and requires fewer than 12 credits to graduate, Vokbus said.

     "Immigration understands that grad students sometimes need some flexibility and that sometimes a student who is only registered for three credits but is madly trying to prepare for qualifying exams or doing proposals for dissertation topics, truly is full-time though he happens not to meet that standard definition. [But] if a graduate student is only taking three credits or is only paying program fee, the department needs to notify the Graduate School to make sure the Graduate School makes the notation that in fact that department considers the student to be full-time. That is essential. Many, many graduate students truly are full-time but truly will not look like full-time if you simply look at the record.

     "One of the requirements is that every semester every university needs to do a SEVIS registration for each of the foreign students enrolled. We have somewhere around 1,800 foreign students enrolled. And they want us to know that the student is not only registered but [also] is physically present in the United States. We're going to need help from departments who, [for example,] have a grad student who's working for two months in Syria beginning of the semester.

     "Part of the mandated regulation is keeping track of everyone - not just the students, the visiting foreign faculty and scholars. We're going to need your help to know when people leave early. Or, if someone is extending their stay, we need to know before their visa documents expire, so that we make sure they don't fall out of status. The other surprise we learned at our conference was that we have to track everyone's dependents each time they enter and leave and re-enter the United States."

     SEVIS may create large delays in pay for graduate assistants and visiting scholars because of the paperwork, Vokbus said.

     "What departments can do to help is to try to be educated, to think twice every time you're thinking about dealing with a foreign student or scholar: 'Is there something extra I should be doing?'" she said. "Urge students to be aware, to read the messages we send them. Urge them to keep their personal information up to date on SPIRE, because that's what we're using to be in contact with students. Everyone should refer to our Web site (www.umass.edu/ipo/sax/sevis.html). As we get real information, apart from this guesswork, we will update it. If [faculty or staff] have questions dealing with a foreign student or scholar, [they should] ask us. It's much better to ask in advance rather than to wait until someone's in some horrible crisis that we can't solve."