Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - June 26, 2002
Panelists Clash Over Value of Foreign Students at American Colleges By CATHERINE E. SHOICHET
Washington
Federal policies that allow foreigners to study in the United States create a national-security risk and fail to produce significant economic and social benefits, a prominent immigration scholar argued at a contentious panel discussion on Capitol Hill Tuesday. But a leading higher-education lobbyist attacked the scholar's views as "ideology masquerading as analysis."
In a panel discussion sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank here, George J. Borjas, a professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, argued that the "benefits of the foreign-student program are greatly exaggerated" and that "the program may well generate a net economic loss for the country." The discussion came just a few hours after the immigration center published on its Web site a paper by Mr. Borjas titled "An Evaluation of the Foreign Student Program."
Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, rebutted Mr. Borjas's views at the panel discussion and described the paper as an unfair "diatribe" against higher education.
In the paper, Mr. Borjas writes that the federal programs through which foreigners gain visas to study in the United States are "riddled with corruption" and "ineptly run" by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Student visas, he argues, present a major security risk by allowing potential terrorists to enter the country.
Mr. Borjas also states in his paper that the traditional arguments that college officials use to justify the student-visa system are "platitudes" with "no evidence whatsoever" to support them. He dismisses the ideas that foreign students benefit the United States and colleges by diversifying enrollments, contributing tuition payments to the U.S. economy, and helping speed the process of scientific discovery.
"It is far from clear that the [foreign student] program actually benefits the country," he said at Tuesday's panel discussion. Colleges and universities act in their own financial interest, he said, using foreign graduate students as "low-wage labor."
Mr. Borjas also accused higher-education lobbying groups of exaggerating the economic benefits of the tuition paid by foreign students, saying those arguments fail to acknowledge that a college's cost of educating a student "far exceeds" the tuition that students pay. Taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize the education of foreign students, he said.
"The remarkably powerful combination of INS ineptitude and the higher-education sector's greed perverted what would have seemed to be a sensible and noble effort into an economically dubious proposition and a national-security fiasco," he writes in his paper.
Mr. Hartle, however, disputed some of Mr. Borjas's arguments. "I'm not sure Mr. Borjas understands the student-visa process," he said. "It all comes down to money in his view. These are broad-based charges that have very little data to back them up."
Mr. Hartle cited the importance of diversity on college campuses as a major reason for continuing to encourage foreign-student enrollment at colleges in the United States. "It exposes native-born students to people from different backgrounds or cultures," he said. In addition, foreign students -- many of whom become leaders when they return to their native countries -- gain a better understanding of democracy, he said.
Mr. Hartle agreed with Mr. Borjas that the government's process for issuing student visas has flaws. "Colleges do not have access to the information about who poses a threat or who will return to their country," he said.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican who is chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, also participated in the panel discussion. He praised Mr. Borjas's paper as a "compelling and provocative challenge to conventional wisdom which is too often charged by platitudes." The problems presented by foreign-student programs, he said, are merely a "microcosm" of the problems surrounding U.S. immigration policy. "It is a policy beset by fraud, by mismanagement, and now by security risks of major proportions," he said.
Mr. Hartle said he was not concerned by the lawmaker's interest in Mr. Borjas's paper. "It's an ivory-tower exercise inside the Beltway," Mr. Hartle said. "I don't think anything in particular will come of it."
After the panelists presented their views, members of the audience, which included Congressional staff members and higher-education lobbyists, got the chance to ask questions. This led to some heated exchanges between questioners and panelists.
Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, questioned whether state legislatures were aware that they were subsidizing the education of foreign students and said that the subsidy was something higher-education lobbyists "glossed over." Mr. Hartle compared Mr. Camarota's comment to the isolationist approach of the late 19th century. "The Yellow Peril is back," he said.
"That's outrageous," Mr. Camarota replied. "You are basically a race-baiter."
The discussion comes in the wake of several changes to the nation's foreign-student program after September 11. Congress has required college and universities to begin using an Internet database of foreign students by January 30, 2003. And last month, the Bush administration announced a plan to create a federal panel to examine visa applications from foreigners who want to study "sensitive subjects."
Mr. Borjas said that last fall's terrorist attacks sparked his interest in the foreign-student program. "There's a huge hole in the literature," he said. "As an academic, it's always great to be first asking a question. You get more things and more money."