New INS tracking system for foreign students will likely be delayed

The Immigration and Naturalization Service's new automated system for tracking foreign students living in the United States will probably not be ready by the end of January, as currently scheduled, according to a new report from the Justice Department's inspector general.

The current tracking system is "untimely and significantly flawed," the inspector general said. Moreover, the INS still has to devise a re-certification process for schools and must train employees to use the new procedures before an improved system can be implemented, concluded a 188-page report investigating record-keeping and mailing procedures at the agency.

"We question whether the INS will be able to complete this huge undertaking before Jan. 30, 2003," the report said. INS Commissioner James Ziglar has pledged to fully implement the new tracking system by that time.

President Bush called for the inspector general's investigation in March after an INS contractor sent letters to a Venice, Fla., flight school six months after Sept. 11 confirming the agency's approval of student visas for terrorists Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi. The INS approved the visas before the terrorist attacks, but schools usually receive confirmation letters later, after an agency contractor enters the data manually into a computer system.

Although a contractor mailed the confirmation letters to the school, the IG's report blamed INS employees for the oversight. "Absent instructions from the INS, ACS [the contractor] managers had no independent responsibility to check its records to verify whether it possessed documents related to any Sept. 11 attacks," the report said. "The fault lies with many INS employees who could have, and should have, considered the existence of the [notification] forms and brought them to the attention of the FBI."

The agency's new Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) will replace the current paper-based system. It is designed to eliminate delays in notification by informing all parties simultaneously once an INS decision on a visa application is completed. SEVIS requires the INS and schools to process all change-of-status applications for foreign students within 30 days. The limit was supposed to take effect in October, but a new contract and a substantial backlog of applications delayed the reform.

SEVIS alone will not solve all the problems associated with tracking foreign students, according to the IG's report. "The INS must review and properly re-certify the thousands of schools that are currently certified to enroll foreign students, must ensure that its employees and schools timely and accurately enter information into SEVIS, and must ensure that the information from SEVIS is analyzed and used adequately," the report said.

The inspector general's investigation did not find any evidence to suggest that INS inspectors violated agency policies when they admitted Atta and Alshehhi into the country on three separate occasions. But the report criticized the agency for not closely scrutinizing aliens entering the country as students prior to Sept. 11.

"Atta's and Alshehhi's admissions highlighted that INS inspectors lack important information when assessing aliens' eligibility for admission into the United States," the report said. For example, information on whether an alien has a change-of-status application pending does not come up when primary inspectors do automated checks.

In September 2000, Atta and Alshehhi applied to change their status from visitors to students. By the time the INS had approved their requests in July and August 2001, Atta and Alshehhi had completed their flight training at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla.