Being An International Student In A Post 9/11 World

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Being An International Student in a Post 9/11 World

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free," just not your students.

"I knew what was going to happen after 9/11. It was understood," said Tariq Halela, a 21-year-old student at Boston University. What he understood was simple: for an international student, living in the United States would never be the same.
Halela, an Indian born Kuwaiti native, has been studying stateside for over two years. He is an accounting major and speaks four languages -- English, Arabic, Hindi and Gujarati -- fluently.

"I love it here in the states," he said. "That is why I was so worried when I got a call from the ISO [international student's office] saying I could be deported."

Confusion over the new immigration rules and regulations is what gave Halela his first deportation scare. With stricter visas guidelines, the culmination of new policies the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have undertaken is the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS.

Now, new international students can choose to study at any one of the over 7,000 SEVIS-certified universities in America. The schools, in turn, provide a …show more content…

X-raying shoes at the airports is one thing, but tracking and compiling information on college students seems a little much to some. Before SEVIS, the records of all students, including international ones, have been kept private under the protection of FERPA, the Family Education Records Protection Act. But now, FERPA protection has been waived for international student records, allowing the Federal Government to request information on topics such as "student misconduct," which includes criticism of the government and non-violent civil disobedience, and a student's field of study, red flagging some "sensitive" research work and majors for their potential to be used in weapons

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