Many Foreign Students Want to Stay the Course

For two agonizing days after the terrorist attacks, Burak Yalincgoren’s mother in Istambul tried frantically to phone her 21-year-old son in California.

It turned out that during a boat trip to Santa Catalina, his cell phone had fallen overboard. But even after learning that her son was safe, his mother was not entirely comfortable. “She is still worried that American people might have some sort of prejudice against Middle Eastern people,” said Yalincgoren.

Yalincgoren is a foreign student--and Muslim--at a time when American legislators are calling for closer scrutiny of all international students. He looks “Mediterranean,” as he puts it. He grew up next to an American Air Force base in southern Turkey and lived through the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His father survived a terrorist attack at a local tennis club, but the pregnant woman sitting next to his father did not. Yalincgoren knows terrorism, and he knows war. For now he stays quiet and doesn’t voice his opinion.

“I try not to get into conversations about this topic with a lot of Americans, because I don’t believe in war,” said Yalincgoren, who is a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles. “And that could be taken as I am supporting Middle Eastern countries and terrorist groups.”

Whether you look Middle Eastern or not, fall 2001 is not an easy time to be a foreign student on an American campus. After authorities discovered that one of the 19 hijackers had entered the United States on a student visa to enroll in a language school in Oakland--and never turned up--many colleges and universities have been asked to hand over lists of foreign students to federal authorities. During the 1999-2000 school year, slightly more than half a million foreign students had visas to study in the U.S.

These days, it seems every foreign student has a tale to tell--most of them floating in the ether like unconfirmed urban legends--of a friend being yanked into a room to be interrogated, or of other foreign students dropping out after frightened parents called them home. Chain e-mails zip through cyberspace, updating jittery foreign students on legal issues. At Cal State Dominguez Hills, 24 first-year students from the United Arab Emirates returned to their home countries to assuage their terrified families.

Many foreign students say they have difficulty focusing on schoolwork, and an advisor to international students at Cal State Northridge says she is counseling students to carry immigration documentation on them at all times as a preventive measure.

Despite the stress of soothing worried parents a world away via e-mail and phone and serving as grass-roots diplomats to their American counterparts, a handful of foreign students interviewed say they do not object to cooperating with U.S. authorities. All said that they feel their campus administrators and others have looked after their safety and well-being.

“I guess it’s fair,” said 25-year-old Wael Ismal, who came to this country seven weeks ago from Cairo to study business administration at Cal State Dominguez Hills. “I know very well what I should do as a student, and what I am eligible to do. I know what hours I have to work, what kind of job I have to look for. If I do that, I am not afraid that my data will be shared, because I am doing the right thing. I don’t mind more rules or restrictions on international students.”

“This country has given me an opportunity,” added Roopa Rawjee, a 37-year-old graduate student from India who is studying education at Cal State Northridge. “Don’t I owe something to this country? Don’t I owe honesty and some kind of allegiance? Just because the INS is tracking you does not mean you are a criminal. Does a credit check mean you are a criminal?”

Still, some foreign students say they feel increased pressure to cloak their foreign-ness. “My father called me two weeks ago,” Rawjee said. “He said, ‘Don’t wear Indian clothes anymore.”’ Rawjee refused but said many younger students feel the pressure to conform. “You begin to doubt yourself. You begin to have insecurity about your identity, about where you come from.”

*

To receive a visa to study in the U.S., a student must first be accepted by an accredited school. Applications are processed by U.S. embassies in the students’ home countries. The length of a visa depends on the program to which the student has been accepted.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has proposed legislation requiring tougher scrutiny during the student visa process, including background checks by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which are not required now. The bill also would require schools to report to the INS on a quarterly basis with the student’s grades, courses, date of visa expiration and any disciplinary action taken by the school.

“Today, there is little scrutiny given to those who claim to be foreign students seeking study in the United States,” Feinstein said Tuesday in a press release. “In fact, the foreign student visa program is one of the most unregulated and exploited visa categories. While I will be working to clean up the student visa program, I pulled back on the moratorium for now because the schools have assured me that they will help me to reform this program.”

Just after the attacks, Feinstein called for a six-month moratorium on student visas, which are granted by the State Department, but relented on Friday after the president of the nation’s leading organization of colleges and universities pledged that schools would voluntarily provide immigration authorities with more information about foreign students.

Some students say they are willing to undergo additional scrutiny but feel the authorities are barking up the wrong tree.

“I think it would be enough if the pertinent federal agencies within the U.S. enforced the immigration policies more strictly instead of basically calling any future international student a potential terrorist,” said Vlad Milev, a junior from Bulgaria who attends Occidental College.

“The latest terrorist attack proves you don’t have to be a student to achieve your goals,” said Yalincgoren, the Turkish student. “If the government wants to tighten every screw they can find, I don’t know ... but the people who come here, who are accepted at universities like UCLA, Berkeley, or other prestigious colleges, I don’t think they are doing all these things to accomplish terrorist acts.”

Milev, who is Occidental’s student body president, believes that foreign students are actually an important U.S. investment in counter-terrorism.

“The terrorists do not want American values to be promoted, but very often international students are the ones to promote those same values once they return to their respective homes,” he said.

As the crisis enters its second month, some foreign students said they have been surprised at the lack of knowledge American students display about their own country’s history and foreign policy.

“They have everything. They don’t really need to worry about what the politics of their country is,” said Drenusha Kusari, 19, a student at Occidental from Kosovo who grew up in a war zone. She added that students in her major--diplomacy and world affairs--know a lot.

Many foreign students said they serve as cultural attaches on campus, fielding questions from American students suddenly curious about life in distant countries they have heard little about.

“Most of the Americans don’t have any perception about the Middle East or Egypt or the culture of Islam,” said Ismal, the Cal State Dominguez Hills student from Egypt. “I feel that I am glad that I have this chance to tell them. I like to present my culture, my people. That is better than getting false news through somebody else.”

Because of personal experiences, many foreign students are strongly antiwar and find themselves in uncomfortable conversations when some American friends expect them to be as nationalistic as they, the native-born.

Kusari, the Kosovar refugee, experienced war for basically her entire life and lost relatives. That makes her wary of war and causes her family--still in Kosovo--additional distress now.

“It is a hard thing to go through again,” Kusari said. “It is just horrifying. I know the feeling of war. That is why I am surprised by the Americans’ pro-war stance.”

She stresses, though, that war helped her to come and study here.

“I cannot say anything negative about the American foreign policy, because it was the American initiative that saved my life. It was the NATO intervention, actually led by the United States that actually intervened in Kosovo and stopped the war. I was able to experience freedom for the first time in my life. I got to come here for a better education.”

For now, Kusari hopes that fears of foreign students will not keep her from getting a good education.

“It felt strange for them to be asking us to leave,” she said. “Or not give us visas for six months. It’s just scary because if this actually happens, I’m going to be affected. I’m not going to be able to get a better education. And that is what I came here for.”... I am glad that I have this chance to tell them.’