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California Senator Proposes Ban on Foreign Students
California Senator Dianne Feinstein said Friday she will propose to the Congress to impose a temporary ban on international students coming into the United States in the wake of the terror attacks.
The Congresswoman, from Monterey in northern California, considered taking the step after federal investigators revealed that at least one of the suspected highjackers in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon came to the United States on a student visa.
Feinstein said in a statement that she will propose legislation to temporarily lock out international students in the coming weeks so that the immigration policy authorities will have time to create a better system for background checks and for tracking students after they have entered the country.
She will ask the government to provide 32 million U.S. dollars to the Immigration and Naturalization Services to help it track foreign students in the country.
Feinstein admitted that her proposal may be controversial, but insisted that there has to be recognition that this is an unprecedented time in the country.
She said that the national security depends on the system functioning to ensure that terrorists do not take advantage of the vulnerabilities in the student visa program.
Her proposal is sure to rock the societies of foreign students studying in the United States since it sounds like collective punishment.
On the campus of Monterey Institute of International Studies, where there are more than 350 foreign students studying, students voiced their disappointment and indignation at Feinstein's remarks.
"I took my degree here to specialize in a field that cannot be found in other places but Monterey," Norwegian Ketil Horn said. "I think this would destroy or at least limit many people's careers."
"I don't think, just because of one accident, you're going to make America safer by locking out international students," German student Karin Riedl said.
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