Admissions for international students at Emory
are up, but how many actually will make it to campus remains to
be seen as these students work through additional immigration requirements
put in place by the U.S. State Department in the wake of
9/11.
“There’s no way of knowing at this point whether they
all will come, or how many will choose not to come—or can’t—because
of visa trouble,” said Leila Crawford, director of International
Student and Scholar Programs.
One of the biggest shifts for international students has been that,
effective Aug. 1, all applicants for temporary visas must interview
with the American consulate in their country before they are issued
a visa to travel to the United States. Previously only applicants
from some countries had to do go through that process, according
to Crawford.
“The hard part for students is that they have to overcome
‘the presumption of immigration’ by the consular officials,
who assume that an applicant plans to stay in the United States
unless they can prove otherwise,” Crawford said. “Students
are supposedly getting preferential treatment in terms of timeliness,
and that appears to be working, but some students will likely be
delayed due to the sheer number of people involved.”
The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) continues
to have problems, Crawford said. SEVIS was created by the Bureau
of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, formerly the Immigration
and Naturalization Service) in the wake of 9/11 to track all international
students and visitors entering the country. All universities and
colleges accepting international students now must register them
through SEVIS.
“We certainly have had our share of problems with SEVIS and
it’s been frustrating, but most of our issues have centered
on the amount of time it takes to work through the system and have
information processed so students are on track to get here when
school starts,” Crawford said. Other schools have had more
complex problems involving issues such as lost or incorrect data
that affect a student’s legal status to be in the country,
she added.
Another new requirement is that colleges and universities are now
required by the Patriot Act to report to ICE if a student approved
for travel does not show up or drops out of school. Previously,
schools only had to provide that information if asked to do so by
immigration officials. Emory already has been providing that information
at the request of the local ICE office, Crawford said.
Overall, while the latest available figures show international enrollment
was up
6.4 percent in 2002 at Emory, no one will really know if numbers
are up or down until school starts and actual enrollment is tallied,
Crawford said.
In Emory College, international applications continue to grow (nearly
50 percent during the past four years) although enrollment decreased
slightly from last year. International students currently make up
4 percent of the class.
There are 49 international first-year students enrolled representing
22 countries. The geographic breakdown of those students is as follows:
Korea (19); India (5); Hong Kong/China (5); Canada (2); and there
is one student each from Australia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil,
Bulgaria, Columbia, Czech Republic, France, Jamaica, Jordan, Japan,
Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan
and Thailand.
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