Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee
The Student Visa Integrity Act
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
On Thursday, the country will commemorate the 13th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. We learned many lessons from that day. One key lesson was that terrorists can and will exploit our immigration policies to enter and remain in the United States to harm Americans.
The 9/11 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers, some of whom entered on student visas and trained at flight schools in the United States. The 19 individuals applied for 23 visas. They lied on their applications, and they failed to abide by the terms of their visas. This was a wake-up call that we needed better oversight of our visa programs, especially student visas.
But this wasn’t our first wake-up call. In 1993, the American people were confronted with the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. One of the instigators of that attack was on an expired student visa. Since 1993, we have mandated the tracking of foreign students and gave schools a responsibility of helping us monitor these students while they are on U.S. soil.
Unfortunately, while this tracking system is up and running today, it is still antiquated and the federal government remains incapable of ensuring that those who enter the country are students who are truly attending our educational institutions.
Today, nearly 10,000 schools across the country accept foreign students and are responsible for communicating with the government about their whereabouts. Enrollment of foreign students is increasing. According to the Brookings Institution, the number of foreign students on F-1 visas in U.S. colleges and universities grew from 110,000 in 2001 to 524,000 in 2012.
Despite this overwhelming increase, the technology and oversight of the student visa program has insufficiently improved. Now, 13 years after 9/11, we have sham schools setting up in strip malls without real classrooms. We have foreign nationals entering the U.S. with the intent to study, but then disappear and never attend a real class.
Allow me to cite two examples of sham schools that pose a problem.
In 2011, Tri-Valley University reported that they’d bring in less than 100 students but had actually brought in over 1,500. University officials were caught giving F-1 visas to undercover agents, posing as foreign nationals who explicitly professed no intention of attending classes. Students paid $5,400 per semester in tuition to the school to obtain those student visas until the school was shut down.
On May 29, 2014, the Micropower Career Institute in New York was raided by federal officials. Its top officials were arrested on student visa fraud. Allegedly, school officials did not report foreign nationals when they didn’t attend classes, and they falsified those students' records so the school could continue to collect federal education money for them. But, despite the indictment of officials at this so-called school, it remains open for business.
The Government Accountability Office reported to Congress in 2012 that sham schools posed a problem. The GAO said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have a process to identify and analyze risks across schools. ICE has overlooked major indicators of fraud, and they cannot follow trends or predict abuse.
Two years later, the problems continue to exist and the Obama administration just fiddles while the problem burns.
ABC News investigated the student visa program and made it public last week. They said that 6,000 foreign nationals on student visas have disappeared. An ICE official acknowledged that they have “blended into the landscape somewhere.” Yet, this number is not a total number of student visa overstays. This is a number of students that ICE is trying to locate. That’s alarming news.
It’s time to close the loopholes and clamp down on schools that have a poor track record with regard to foreign students. So, this week I’m introducing legislation that requires schools to be certified in order to bring in foreign students, and it would suspend schools if there are non-compliance issues.
My bill would increase penalties for those who perpetrate fraud, and require background checks and training for school officials. It would also put an immediate end to a flight school’s participation in the foreign student program if they are not FAA certified. Finally, it would require that the Department of Homeland Security to deploy an upgrade to the existing tracking system. This upgrade can be paid for by using fees from student visas and the schools that participate.
These aren’t new ideas. These are provisions that were taken from a 2012 bipartisan bill led by the senior senator from New York. That bill never passed the Senate. When the gang of eight wrote their misguided immigration bill, they failed to include these reforms. So, I offered an amendment during committee consideration of the immigration bill last summer and it was included in the bill that passed the Senate. So, the bill I’m introducing today is the exact same language. It has been debated. It was accepted by unanimous consent in the Judiciary Committee.
I hope my colleagues will seriously consider the bill I’m introducing. It’s well past time that we close loopholes and be more vigilant in the foreign student visa program, especially with the growing terrorist threats we face.
I yield the floor.
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