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Technical issues delay
INS visa-tracking system
Robert Beckec
Chicago Tribune (KRT)
CHICAGO — Just one day be
fore educational institutions
around the country were scheduled
to begin using a new computer sys
tem to keep tabs on their foreign
students, the federal government
delayed implementation of the
troubled system, citing continued
technical problems.
The U.S. Immigration and Natu
ralization Service late Wednesday
postponed until Feb. 15 imple
mentation of the Student and Ex
change Visitor Information Sys
tem, or SEVIS, acknowledging that
campuses were still having trouble
entering student data into the
massive database.
INS spokesman Chris Bentley
said the “grace period” would al
low universities and the agency to
resolve some of the technical is
sues surrounding the system,
which is being rolled out to track
the approximately one million in
ternational students who enroll in
U.S. schools.
Late Thursday, Bentley said up
grades to the system during the
last 24 hours had greatly improved
its performance.
But those assurances were of lit
tle comfort to several hundred col
lege officials from around the Mid
west who had gathered earlier in
the day at the University of Illinois
at Chicago to quiz INS officials
about the new system.
When Paul Ladd, INS’ special
counselor to the SEV1S team, ac
knowledged that the computer
system “has been a little slow” in
recent days, the crowd erupted
in laughter.
“Please tell me what I’m doing
wrong, or I am going to quit,” said
Brigid Avery, an admissions repre
sentative at Aquinas College in
Grand Rapids, Mich., who had been
unsuccessful in coaxing SEVIS to
print crucial documents for the
school’s international students,
Fast-tracked after the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks, SEVIS is designed to
link for the first time the schools
that admit foreign students with
federal agencies, providing an in
stant exchange of information
ranging from academic status and
field of study to any disciplinary ac
tion taken against a student be
cause of criminal conviction.
SEVIS, which cost S36 million to
implement, will replace a tracking
system riddled with errors and
fraud. The INS has conceded that it
had all but stopped monitoring the
more than 70,000 schools and in
stitutions empowered to admit for
eign students.
But technical problems and de
lays have hampered the system.
Schools are only now testing key
software that would allow them to
enter thousands of student records
at once instead of one at a time.
The INS acknowledged
Thursday that while it has
approved 3,200 schools to issue
the necessary documents to
admit foreign students, its has
yet to complete the required
review of another 1,100 schools.
Bentley said the agency antici
pated completing that assess
ment in coming weeks.
On Thursday, school officials
swapped horror stories of the hours
spent on SEVIS trying to enter the
records of a single student or of
dozens of calls to a friendly, but ulti
mately unhelpful, SEVIS help line.
Harvey Stein, acting director of the
office of international affairs at the
University of Chicago, offered a philo
sophical approach to tlie glitches.
“Everybody knows when you
break out a new system nation
wide, it’s got to have problems,”
Stein said. “So I feel beleaguered
and exhausted, but not hostile.”
© 2003, Chicago Tribune. Distributed
by Knight Ridder/Tribune information
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