In an example of lax oversight involving student visas, the U.S. government has failed to keep track of schools allowed to issue a key document that foreigners need to enter this country to study.
A review by the Tribune of more than two dozen Chicago schools authorized by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to issue I-20 forms–which verify that a foreign student has been accepted at a bona fide institution–reveals that the agency’s accounting of the schools is in disarray.
Although the INS is supposed to review the schools every two years, the list contains institutions that dissolved as Illinois corporations years ago–in one case, more than a decade ago. A parking lot has stood for years at the address listed for one school. Other address listings are for school buildings demolished long ago.
The Academy for Adults, 30 W. Washington St., is one of the schools with the authority to issue the document. But there hasn’t been an office building on that block–the long-vacant Block 37–since 1989, and a search of Illinois public records did not find a school with that name.
INS officials, who learned last week that a school was notified that student visas had been approved for two terrorists in the Sept. 11 attacks, acknowledged that the list of 74,000 schools nationwide was in a sorry state.
“What you’re finding is definitely a problem,” said Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for the INS office in Chicago. “It’s not a problem unique to Chicago.”
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who was chairman of congressional hearings in October that probed the tracking of international students by U.S. agencies, called the findings in Illinois “disappointing–but not surprising.”
“They obviously don’t do a very good job of scrubbing this list,” Hoekstra said.
Further, the government cannot determine which schools issued I-20s. Officials for the INS and the State Department said the agencies do not track the information by institution.
Federal agencies are working to implement by January 2003 an automated system that would keep better tabs on international students who are accepted for study but who do not attend or later drop out of school.
Experts say a key element of that program, known as the Student Exchange Visitor Informational System (SEVIS), is the accuracy of the list of schools approved to issue I-20s.
I-20s are used by the State Department as proof that a student has been accepted for study at an approved U.S. college or trade school. Once they have that form, the international students also must demonstrate they have the financial wherewithal to attend school in the U.S. and that they don’t intend to remain here after completing their studies.
“It’s an essential piece of the process,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education. “No I-20, no application.”
The types of institutions allowed to issue I-20s are diverse, ranging from traditional high schools and four-year colleges to trade, beauty and auto mechanic schools. There are even elementary schools on the list.
Every two years the INS is supposed to review the credentials of the schools, but in Chicago that “has not been done for quite a few years,” officials say.
Agency officials say they’ve pursued other priorities, including clearing up the backlog of naturalization applications and catching and deporting illegal aliens with criminal records.
In testimony before Hoekstra’s subcommittee on select education, acting Deputy INS Commissioner Michael Becraft said the agency needed to review the thousands of schools that issue I-20s “to start deciding who needs to be in the program and who needs to be removed from the program … we are getting rid of the flimflams and we need to look at that.”
INS officials said Friday that the agency would announce this summer a recertification deadline for schools issuing I-20s.
But experts note that corrections will take time.
“The current system did not emerge overnight and INS will not be able to fix it overnight,” Hartle said.
The depth of the problems is demonstrated by a stroll through the Loop, where many of Illinois’ 1,200 INS-approved schools are–or are supposed to be.
An examination of approximately 30 locations, along with interviews and searches of public records, reveals a simple fact: Many of the schools the INS lists don’t exist or moved years ago.
Just one block east of its Chicago offices, the INS lists several schools, including Computer Schools Inc. and Chicago Career College. None of the schools could be found there.
Diane Vinson of Brijus Properties, the manager of a building where two of the schools were supposedly located, said there was a computer school in the building about 10 years ago.
Marjorie Pekar, a manager of the historic Fine Arts Center at 410 S. Michigan Ave., said another INS-listed school–the Chicago School for Medical Technology–never had been a tenant of the building.
At a Loop address where the INS thought the Chicago College of Commerce operated, a different school is holding classes for 175 students who study court reporting and take paralegal classes. That school had not joined the INS program, however, according to the academic dean.
After searching for 30 schools listed in the Loop, the Tribune found four operating there. Only one, the Harrington Institute of Interior Design, was at the address listed by the INS.
The federal agency also listed them at a second location, 203 N. Wabash Ave., where Harrington President Patrick Comstock said the school never operated.
Comstock said the school has been involved in the I-20 program since 1979. It issues, on average, 10 to 15 of the forms annually, he said.
Some schools visited by the Tribune were puzzled to learn that they had landed on the INS’ I-20 list.
“We really don’t have any knowledge about it and don’t understand why we are on the list in the first place,” said Jill Chuckerman, a spokeswoman for the Lou Conte Dance Studio.
Given the depth of the problems with INS records, officials fret that solutions will be complicated and lengthy.
Hoekstra said he is skeptical that the SEVIS system will be effective in helping solve the problem.
“I have a lot of respect for INS employees, but I think that over the last few years we have been promised a number of improvements and they really haven’t delivered,” Hoekstra said.
