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Chronicle of Higher Education
Friday, October 24, 2003
Homeland Security to Seek $100 Fee to Pay for Student-Tracking Database
By MICHAEL ARNONE
Washington
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is scheduled to release draft regulations next week that would require each international student to pay a one-time $100 fee to cover the costs of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or Sevis, the database that the department uses to track them. Asa Hutchinson, the under secretary of border and transportation security at the department, announced on Wednesday that the fee would raise more than $30-million for exclusive use on Sevis.
College officials responded to the news with both support and skepticism. Without knowing the details of the regulations, it is difficult to judge exactly how they will affect colleges, said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education. The fee is larger than he and his peers had expected, he added, but understandable because the Homeland Security Department wants additional money to protect the country from potential terrorists who might misuse student visas.
Mr. Hutchinson's announcement marked the government's latest attempt to set a firm date for collecting a Sevis fee. Under current rules, colleges had been expected to start collecting the fee on March 1, 2003, but the deadline passed without regulations in place. Colleges have known since at least 2001 that the fee would someday exist.
The charge is necessary because the law that created Sevis promised that fees, not federal appropriations, would pay for its operating costs. The $100 fee is the maximum that Congress permitted and more than the $95 suggested in the current rules, said Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the department.
The fee would raise money for system maintenance and for additional staff members to work with colleges. It would also pay for efforts to make sure that international students arrive on campuses as promised, do not drop out, and meet the conditions of their student visas.
College officials have worried that a high fee would be a barrier to international students from poor countries. The students already have to pay a $100 visa-processing fee to the Department of State and a visa-issuance fee determined by their country of origin.
The former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which oversaw Sevis and was folded into the Homeland Security Department in March, hired KPMG Consulting in August 2002 to evaluate whether the $95 fee it wanted to impose on students would cover the program's costs. KPMG found that the charge would be too high, considering that the USA Patriot Act provided $36.8-million to pay for Sevis, an amount that was not factored into the original calculations.
At the time, the consultants suggested a $54 fee for students and exchange visitors such as professors and visiting scholars. A $35 fee would have applied to exchange visitors working as au pairs, camp counselors, and participants in summer work/travel programs.
College officials say they are mystified and frustrated over the Homeland Security Department's decision to push now for a fee at almost twice the recommended level. "Why do these fee studies if you're going to throw them in the wastebasket?" complained Victor C. Johnson, associate executive director of Nafsa: Association of International Educators.
Mr. Strassberger, the department spokesman, said that the KPMG study did not account for all of the activities that the Sevis fee would have to support.
The Homeland Security Department will announce the proposed rule and give colleges 30 days to suggest changes, he continued. After that, the department will make the changes it deems necessary. The government hopes to have the final regulation in place by this spring or, at the latest, next fall.
College officials hope the fee will not take effect until next fall, said David B. Clubb, director of the office of international services at the University of Pittsburgh. That would avoid the confusing and unfair situation, he said, of some students applying before the deadline and avoiding the fee.
Mr. Strassberger said the department would collect the fee but added that he did not know the mechanics of how it would do so. He said that his department is discussing with the State Department whether international students might pay the Sevis fee when they apply for their visas at a consulate or embassy overseas. Mr. Clubb and other college officials have said that they would prefer that option to having colleges collect the fee.
Copyright © 2003 The Chronicle of Higher Education
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