whether the prospective student has any known connections to terrorist activity, espionage, or his or her country's nuclear program. Neither of these more extensive security checks considers the prospective students' ties to their countries' chemical or biological weapons programs, however. Based on these name and background checks and information from other sources (including U.S. intelligence agencies)— the State Department informs the consular officer whether to issue a student visa. The security checks require for students from terrorism-sponsoring countries in the Middle East to obtain a visa to study in the United States range from extensive (Libya) to non-existent (Syria). The requirements are summarized below:

• Libyan students seeking to study in the United States are subject to the most extensive security checks of any of the Middle East state-sponsors of terrorism. An SAO is required for all Libyan passport holders, persons born in Libya of Libyan fathers, and third-country nationals living or who have lived in Libya for two years or more since 1981, regardless of their current place of residence.10 For visa applications indicating an intention to study certain nuclear-related "sensitive technologies" (but not chemical or biological ones), the SAO includes the applicant's "field of expertise, educational background, professional employment history, focus and nature of past and present study and research, detailed description of the proposed study or research program in the U.S., and sponsoring institution.”

111

• Iraqi students require an SAO, but there are no additional requirements regarding "certain sensitive technologies." 12 Students from Iraq traveling on other passports, however, may be able to evade the SAO.

⚫ Iranian students require an SAO if they intend graduate-level study in the nuclear field, but not for graduate-level study in any other field, including those which may be related to chemical or biological weapons programs. SAOs are also not required at all for Iranian undergraduates, even if they plan to study in the nuclear field. 13 As with Iraqi students, Iranian students holding other passports may be able to evade the more in-depth SAO background check.

Although all applications from Iranian students require a Visa Eagle check,14 there is a significant loophole in the process. After requesting the Visa Eagle, U.S. consular officers are instructed to wait thirty days for a reply from the State Department. If there is no reply within this time, standard procedures require the consular officer to issue a visa. Although this procedure saves the State Department the trouble of responding in cases in which no security problems are found, it creates the possibility of wrongfully issuing a visa in cases in which links to terrorism are found after the thirty day period-for example, if there is a delay in the transmission of the Visa Eagle request, if the request is lost or stolen, or if the State Department is simply slow to respond.

•Sudanese students are not subject to any special security clearance procedures unless they are a government official or member of the armed forces to whom Washington generally denies visas. 15

• Syrian students are unique among applicants from state-sponsors of terrorism in that they are not subject to any security clearance procedures, regardless of the prospective student's course of study (e.g., nuclear physics) or source of funding (e.g., government funds).16

VISA DENIALS AND APPEALS

Despite these security procedures, few non-immigrant visa applicants are denied entry into the United States because of concerns about terrorism or technology transfer (see table below).

NON-IMMIGRANT VISAS ISSUED, DENIED, AND REVERSED, 1992-96 17

10 U.S. Department of State, Foreign Affairs Manual, vol. 9, part IV, September 2, 1996.

11 Ibid., August 1, 1994.

12 Ibid.

NON-IMMIGRANT VISAS ISSUED, DENIED, AND REVERSED, 1992-96 17—Continued

Moreover, a significant percentage of those initially denied entry due to concerns about terrorist activity and illegal technology transfer have been able to appeal these decisions to the State Department and ultimately receive visas. Although data on the exact number of student visas denied to nationals of terrorist-sponsoring states are not available, the table below shows the number of non-immigrant visas (of which student visas are the second largest of nineteen categories) denied on those bases.

Even these data, however, may not accurately reflect the exact numbers. The number of refusals may be overstated, for example, because a single applicant can re-apply and be refused more than once a year; the number of denials reversed may be understated because some embassies' automated visa systems do not keep data on visa denials reversed.

II-MONITORING FOREIGN STUDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Until recently, the U.S. government did not attempt to monitor the activities of foreign students including what they study, where they study, and who finances their studies once they had entered the United States. According to the INS, it does not even have an effective system for keeping track of foreign students' current addresses. Indeed, a task force report on foreign students, drafted by the INS in response to concerns within the federal law enforcement community about how the 1993 World Trade Center bombers were allowed to enter the United States, declared: "At present, foreign students in the United States are not subject to continuing scrutiny, tracking, or monitoring when they depart, drop out, transfer, interrupt their education, violate [their visa] status, or otherwise violate the law."2

This means, for example, that a student from a terrorism-sponsoring state in the Middle East could apply to study business administration at one school and then transfer to a nuclear engineering program at another school without anyone in the U.S. government necessarily knowing about it-thereby circumventing current visa screening procedures specifically intended to impede access to sensitive U.S. technologies.

In the wake of the World Trade Center bombing and the INS task force report indicating that foreign students in the United States were not subject to any kind of effective tracking or monitoring, in late 1996 the U.S. Congress passed Public Law 104-208 (Subtitle D, Section 641), which authorized a pilot program to determine the practicality of collecting data electronically on foreign students in the United States. The program began in June 1997 and covers approximately 10,000 (or about .02 percent) of the estimated 500,000 foreign students currently in the United States. Although the results of this limited program remain to be seen (a report on its results is scheduled for submission to Congress by 2001), it represents the first real step to address the government's inability to track or monitor foreign students, including those from terrorism-supporting states in the Middle East.

NUMBERS OF FOREIGN STUDENTS

Although the State Department maintains statistics on the number of student visas issued annually, the U.S. government has not kept track of the exact number of foreign students-including those from terrorist-sponsoring states in the Middle East in the country at any given time. Some may quit their studies and leave the country, others may quit but remain in the country, and still others may complete their studies and remain in the country after their visas expire. Reliable estimates put the number of foreign students in the United States at more than 500,000. State Department records indicate that 9,767 visas have been issued to students from state-sponsors of terrorism since the 1991 Gulf War (see table on following page).

1 See Appendix C.

2INS, "Controls Governing Foreign Students and Schools That Admit Them," Final Report by the Task Force on Foreign Student Controls, December 22, 1995, p. 1–1.

3U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, "Report of the Visa Office," 1991-96.

In addition, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) keeps figures on how many "student admittances"-entering the country with a student visa— occur each year. The INS statistics (see table below) indicate that there were 8,492 "student admittances" from terrorist-supporting states in the Middle East since the Gulf War. Depending on the terms of the visa, some students can enter several times on the same visa, as in the case of Syrian and Sudanese students. Whereas Syrian students generally receive multiple-entry visas valid for two years, Sudanese students' multiple-entry visas are valid for only six months. Libyan, Iraqi, and Iranian students must obtain a new visa before each entry into the United States. These figures do not differentiate between students coming directly from their home countries and those who are long-term residents of third countries. The State Department and the INS were unable to explain the discrepancy between the number of students from terrorist-sponsoring states actually admitted to the United States and those provided with student visas, or the sharp increase in the number of students admitted from Libya, Syria, and Sudan between 1994 and 1995.

Data compiled from interviews with Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) official, Office of Policy and Planning/Demographic Statistics, January, March, and July 1997.

WHAT FOREIGN STUDENTS STUDY AND WHO FUNDS THEM

The Institute of International Education (IIE), a private organization that receives federal funding for administering certain student exchange programs, compiles data on foreign students-including what they study and who funds them-by surveying students at educational institutions across the United States. Only about 60 percent of these institutions respond to IIE's surveys, however (exceptions include such major universities as Harvard and Stanford), and only an estimated 50 percent of all foreign students provide the needed information. In addition, there are no effective checks to ensure that students supply truthful information. Nevertheless, the data compiled by the IIE provides at least a partial picture of foreign students not available elsewhere.

In brief, the most recent IIE data (see tables below) indicate that the vast majority of students from terrorism-sponsoring states in the Middle East who responded to the survery report that they are studying in science-related fields (such as engineering, physical and computer sciences, and mathematics), with a plurality studying some form of engineering.

DECLARED AREAS OF STUDY FOR STUDENTS FROM TERRORISM-SPONSORING STATES, 1995-96 5

$Table based on data supplied to author from 1995 and 1996 IE surveys of 1,937 students from terrorism-sponsoring states in the Middle East.

In addition, a significant percentage of respondents reported receiving funding from "non-family sources" (see table below) which, in countries with_authoritarian regimes and strictly controlled economies such as those in the Middle East, probably means the student's government or government-funded institutions. Moreover, because money is fungible and its ultimate source easily disguised, there is no way to determine whether students who declared their source of funding as "personal family" did not receive full or at least partial financing from their governments. The number of students in the latter category may be higher than reported.

DECLARED SOURCES OF FUNDING FOR STUDENTS FROM TERRORISM-SPONSORING STATES, 1995-96 6 [In percent]

The fact that none of the Libyan students surveyed by IIE reported funding from a non-family sponsor may be due to U.S. legal restrictions that prohibit the Libyan government from transferring funds to any person in the United States. The same legal restrictions apply to Iraqi government funds, however, and yet some Iraqi students reported receiving funds from a non-U.S. sponsor, which was most likely the Iraqi government or a government-funded institution. By contrast, Iran, Sudan, and Syria are permitted to transfer funds into the United States.8

7 See Libyan Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR Ch. V, Part 550, Subpart B, Section 550-209, July 1, 1996; and Iraqi Sanctions Regulations, 31 CFR Ch. V, Part 575, Subpart B, Section 575.201, July 1, 1996.

See Terrorism List Governments Sanctions Regulations; Authorization for Government Stipends and Scholarships for Students, 31 CFR Part 596, 61 FR 67943, Fed. Reg., vol. 61, no. 249, December 26, 1996. See also Iranian Transactions Regulations, 31 CFR, Ch. V, Part 560, Subpart B, Section 560.201 and 560,206. These regulations do not explicitly prohibit the Iranian government from transferring funds to Iranian students in the United States.

1"Torture Tales in Bomb Case Are Challenged," New York Times, August 8, 1997.

2"Dr. Germ': One of the world's Most Dangerous Women," Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1995, p. E6; "Head of Saddam's Germ Warfare Project Profiled,” al-Sharq al-Awsat, January 29, 1995, p. 2, in FBIS-NES 95-025, February 7, 1995, p. 48.

Newly codifed immigration law also seems to diminish the need for the ATRC. After the enactment of the Antiterrorism Act in April of 1996, IIRIRA became law, codifying procedures for the deportation of aliens based on classified information.57

III-CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

Allowing foreign students, including those from the Middle East, to study in the United States is generally in the U.S. interest. These students usually return home with an appreciation for the openness of American society and contribute to the development of their respective homelands. The overwhelming majority of foreign students are neither terrorists nor nuclear bombmakers.

The current U.S. procedures for issuing student visas and tracking students once they are in the country, however, are amorphous, weak, and ripe for abuse. Over the past five years, thousands of students have entered the United States from countries in the Middle East that the United States has officially designated as sponsors of international terrorism. Yet, at any given time, the U.S. government does not know exactly how many of these students are in the country, where they are, what school they are attending, what they are studying, and who finances their studies. By their own admission, a majority of students from terrorist-sponsoring states in the Middle East are studying science-related fields, and some probably are being funded by their governments. The United States should be concerned that students from terrorist-sponsoring states in the Middle East have relatively easy access to U.S. scientific information that can be used to help their countries develop weapons of mass destruction and missiles to deliver them.

The United States is not the only country, however, that attracts such students. Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar, one of those arrested in New York in August 1997 for allegedly planning suicide bombings, reportedly slipped into the United States after entering Canada on a student visa.1 Moreover, Rihab Taha and Jafar Diya Jafar, two of the principal participants in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, received doctorates in Great Britain.2

Although restricting the flow of foreign students to the United States would be unseemly for an open, democratic society, it would be equally foolhardy to ignore the risk that identified state sponsors of terrorism may use weak student visa procedures as a means of entering the United States and acquiring technologies that would otherwise be prohibited to them by export-control laws. Moreover, failing to deal with the small number of states that sponsor terrorism subjects the much greater number of students from other Middle Eastern states to unfair suspicion.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

To address these problems, the U.S. government should:

• Require that the most in-depth background check, known as the Visa Donkey security advisory opinion (SAO), be conducted for all students coming to the United States from the states designated as sponsors of terrorism-Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria. Students from these countries should be denied entry to study nuclear engineering (as is already the case with all Libyan students and Iranian graduate students) or subjects that could contribute to their countries' missile or chemical and biological weapons programs.

• Prohibit the governments of Iran, Sudan, and Syria from financing their students' studies in the United States, as is already done with the government of Libya.

Quickly and fully implement the recommendations of the INS task force to improve monitoring of foreign students in the United States. An INS pilot program to obtain and maintain data on foreign students in the United States, implemented in June 1997 and covering approximately .02 percent of the foreign student population in the United States, is an important start, but it needs to be expanded as quickly as possible.

• Coordinate with other countries that attract students from state-sponsors of terrorism to impede their access to weapons-related technologies and decrease the likelihood that potential terrorist will use student visas into a third country, such as Canada, as an easier route to eventual entry into the United States.

1"Torture Tales in Bomb Case Are Challenged," New York Times, August 8, 1997.

2"Dr. Germ': One of the world's Most Dangerous Women," Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1995, p. E6; "Head of Saddam's Germ Warfare Project Profiled," al-Sharq al-Awsat, January 29, 1995, p. 2, in FBIS-NES 95-025, February 7, 1995, p. 48.