What are your thoughts about that piece, BTW, Missy?
See my response to CH. And what are your thoughts?
Change of subject.
We were talking about the secondary and tertiary consequences of this event. Here's one of them.
Tucson, Arizona Friday, 5 October 2001
Loss of foreign students would be costly
Tucson economy could lose $22M if Congress imposes ban
By Inger Sandal
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson's economy could lose nearly $22 million in the next year if Congress temporarily bans new foreign students from campuses including the UA, which has already lost about $500,000 from students leaving after the terrorist attacks.
Any loss is acutely painful to the University of Arizona, which imposed a two-month hiring freeze Monday to help meet $14 million in midyear cuts forced by a looming state budget deficit.
About 40 of the UA's 200 Middle Eastern students have returned to their home countries. Although the UA has had no reports of retaliatory violence on campus since the Sept. 11 attacks, officials have had to counter the fears of students' families and quash rumors generated by incidents on other campuses.
The UA, along with campuses across the country, continues to feel the backlash of the attacks in other ways, as well, because of diverse student populations.
The UA is one of about 200 campuses that have turned over otherwise confidential information about students to federal or police investigators as part of the terrorism investigations.
"We consulted with the Department of Education and confirmed that student records in this case did fall under the definition of health and safety," UA spokeswoman Sharon Kha said. "These circumstances clearly justify providing information."
One of the suspected hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks, Hani Hanjour, was enrolled at the UA in the early 1990s.
It's also likely that educators will be asked to do more to help the federal government to track foreign students through a computerized system, following reports that some of the suspected hijackers enrolled in U.S. schools but never attended. One of the terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was in the country on an expired student visa.
"Universities are willing to work with government agencies to strike a balance between security for citizens and the costs and burdens of additional reporting and tracking requirements," said Nan Stockholm Walden, the UA's vice president for federal relations.
However, educators throughout the nation strongly oppose a proposal by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, to impose a six-month moratorium on student visas. Feinstein said the government needs the time to develop its tracking system.
Critics call the proposal ill-conceived, saying visas granted to students represent just 2 percent of the total each year.
"Like many of these complex problems, it's easy to criticize where the systems have failed. It's much more difficult to propose a solution that works while still balancing all these legitimate, competing interests," the UA's Stockholm Walden said.
"Before the events of Sept. 11, the odds were very poor that something like this would pass. In the current climate, the odds are improved. But many (Congress) members will be concerned about some of the more drastic provisions," she said.
Stockholm Walden also found a certain irony in the situation. "Many of the world's leaders have studied at American universities, and these are the very people our president is turning to as allies in this challenging time," she said.
Feinstein, however, has said of her plan: "This may be controversial, but there has to be recognition that this is an unprecedented time in the country."
A six-month moratorium imposed within the next few weeks could keep up to 1,000 foreign students from the spring and fall semesters, costing the UA $10.4 million in lost non-resident tuition and fees. The ripple effect in money lost to the local economy in housing and other spending would reach $22 million, said Kirk Simmons, the UA's executive director of International Affairs.
International students and faculty pump about $90 million into the local economy each year, he said.
Simmons said a complete moratorium on student visas would not benefit anyone. "I think it sends a very negative message to the rest of the world and I think it could have long-term, detrimental effects on the perception of higher education in the United States."
The UA, an increasingly popular destination, has nearly 2,900 foreign students - a 35 percent increase in the past five years. It draws an equal mix of undergraduate and graduate students from more than 130 nations, with 45 percent from China, India, Japan and Mexico.
Pima Community College has more than 700 international students, which includes people who also attend the UA.
Existing immigration laws should be better enforced, said UA doctoral student Muhamed Alkhalil, but a moratorium on new visas would hurt students who come for an education and take a better understanding of democracy back to their home countries.
"People who come to the U.S. to study, like myself, we are the link between the U.S. and our people, in the end," said Alkhalil, who came to the United States from Syria as a Fulbright scholar and is now finishing his doctorate in Near Eastern Studies.
Education is the ultimate solution to terrorism, he said. "One of the problems with a country like Afghanistan is it has been deserted by the elite - the doctors and teachers - all of them have left the country. That's where you begin to see the problem - it's a country left by its educated people," he said.
Mario Urdaneta, a graduate student from Venezuela, also said existing immigration laws are sufficient. "Only a handful of people got in and did harm. It seems like everybody has to pay," he said.
A loss of new foreign students would be obvious in the engineering programs, said Urdaneta, a mechanical engineering major who has many peers from other nations. Why they come is simple, he said: "In the United States, the bright can be their brightest. It's a good place for anyone who wants to do things well. Most of the world isn't that way."
The UA does not track alumni, but records show about 6,000 international alumni in about 150 countries. Japan and Korea have the most active of the 13 alumni organizations that exist abroad.
azstarnet.com |
