[Air-l] Immigration, education, and "big brother" [was: Student of Concern ]

[Miraj Khaled]

Many thanks to Ulla Bunz for the links for submitting
comments/opinions to US Department of Commerce. This
issue is being discussed in Slashdot.org with some
interesting comments.
[http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/20/1825232&from=rss]
  

The following comment from a fellow graduate student
at a US university sums up foreign students' dilemmas
to some degree. The last sentence is specially
noteworthy:
"If you keep driving smart people away like this, you
will end up with none of the valuable knowledge you
are trying to protect."

[From Slashdot]
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150204&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=146&tid=126&tid=103&tid=14&tid=219&mode=thread&pid=12592882#12593553

"I am a foreign graduate student in a US university,
and I am seriously disturbed by the increasing
restrictions on foreigners doing research in the US.
First it was the visa problem that caused a vast drop
of foreign graduate applications. Then they cut
research fundings for fundamental sicence and
prevented non-citizens from participating in DARPA
funded research. Now we have this ridiculous license
joke. US is at the forefront of scientific research
because they were able to attract the smartest minds
from all over the world, but it has come to a point
that even I am seriously considering alternatives
after graduating, and I am sure I am not alone in
thinking about leaving.

If you keep driving smart people away like this, you
will end up with none of the valuable knowledge you
are trying to protect."


--- air-l-aoir.org-request at listserv.aoir.org wrote:

Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 09:47:00 -0400
From: "Ulla Bunz" <bunz at scils.rutgers.edu>
Subject: RE: [Air-l] Immigration, education, and "big
brother" [was: Student of Concern ]
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>


http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2005-05-18/news/feature.html?src=default_rss

Forcing students to get "export" permits for
participation in certain university courses is just
horrible! I've known for a while that there are
so called "black listed" college majors. If you are
either a student or a professor in any of these majors
it is a lot more difficult for you to get a visa for
the US. The list is long and you'd be surprised at all
the seemingly innocuous majors that the US Department
of Homeland Security considers threatening. I think
Geography is on it, because you learn about GIS and
global positioning systems, and Geology, because you
learn about oil, etc. etc. 

A lot of international students have not been able to
get student visas in the last year or so because
immigration rules have become a lot stricter, even
stricter than right after 9/11. I understand this is
done to protect the United States from people who mean
it harm. However, being an international person in the
US, and being white, female, from a "friendly"
Western country, and in a non-black listed major, I
can't even imagine how bad it must be for people who
are different from me, because even for me, who fits
none of the "dangerous" categories (the article lists
China, Cuba, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, North
Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, and Syria as affected
countries, but not Saudi Arabia), visa procedures 
have become even more invasive, slower, and sometimes,
frankly, offensive. 

Apart from the fact that US universities make a lot of
money off international students, requiring export
visas of students just so that they can participate in
regular class activities (like looking through a 
microscope!) is just horrible, horrible, horrible. I
would like to encourage all of you to submit comments
to the Department of Commerce - especially those who 
once replied to our AoIR survey they would not want to
come to the US for a conference anymore because of the
airport fingerprinting.

The article doesn't explain how to go about sending
comments or where. I searched the Department of
Commerce website and found the original notice
(from March 28, 2005) here: 
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/05-6057.htm
Here is an excerpt on how to submit comments: 

<Quote>
Follow the instructions for submitting comments.
E-mail: scook at bis.doc.gov. Include ``RIN 0694-AD29''
in 
the subject line of the message.
Fax: (202) 482-3355.
Mail or Hand Delivery/Courier: U.S. Department of 
Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Regulatory
Policy Division, 14th & Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Room
2705, Washington, DC 20230, ATTN: RIN 0694-AD29.
<Endquote>


Here is the closing paragraph from the article
referred to in the original message. I think it's
pretty telling:

Quote:
While Gupta is already considering a new career path,
[Rachel] Claus warns that rules like these have been
dangerous in the past. "When the Third Reich
was emerging, they said that only Germans of pure
Aryan descent could attend German universities.
Significant numbers of German scholars departed," she
says. "That was detrimental for Germany, but was
glorious for the U.S. "We got Einstein."

http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2005-05-18/news/feature.html?src=default_rss

Ulla

++++++


Miraj Khaled
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