BY LAUREN BARTLETT
UCLA Today

The federal government has set up a new computerized system for maintaining information about international students at universities around the country, and UCLA was ready to participate in the new program by the government’s January deadline.

The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) is an electronic reporting system for transmitting biographical, academic, travel and employment information on international students and exchange visitors from universities to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

UCLA was in full compliance with the SEVIS system on Jan. 30, the initial federal deadline for developing the computer system. Recently, the INS extended the deadline and gave institutions a two-week grace period.

“UCLA, the University of California system and the nation benefit from the contributions of international students who study in the United States,” said Lawrence Gower, director of the UCLA Office of International Students and Scholars. “International education is one of our nation’s best tools for sharing democratic ideas and helping to encourage democracy abroad.”

Currently attending UCLA this academic year are 2,400 international students and 1,700 exchange visitors from 150 countries.

In this initial phase of SEVIS, universities are being required to provide information on new international students and exchange visitors, and current international students and exchange visitors who will be leaving the country but re-entering to continue their studies or training within six months. By late summer 2003, all international students and exchange visitors will need to be a part of the SEVIS database, which is controlled by the INS.

SEVIS changes the way UCLA maintains its records about international students by making it a computer-based rather than paper-based system, university officials explained. Also under the old system, UCLA supplied the INS with updated information, for example, changes of addresses, upon request. Under SEVIS, all updates are sent by computer to the INS.

The INS authorized UCLA to participate in SEVIS late last month after the campus received a site visit in December from an INS-hired contractor. He was provided all information that had previously been sent electronically to the INS, including student statistics and data on who the university’s designated SEVIS officials are.

Preparing for SEVIS has not been easy because of delays in the promulgation of federal rules for it, Gower said. The INS, for example, delayed for months guidelines for “batch processing,” which allows systems, such as UC, with large numbers of international students, to enter data in batches rather than individually.

The tracking system was initially outlined in the 1996 Immigration Act and implemented following the passage of a bipartisan border security bill that was signed into law last year. In December 2001, UC President Richard C. Atkinson sent a letter of support for that legislation to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), an original sponsor of the bill.

Since then, UCLA and the UC system have worked closely with the INS, Congress and the Bush administration to address such pertinent issues as students’ privacy rights, costs to be incurred by schools to implement the system and international education policy issues.