TCC District joins information system
by Brian Wainstein, Reporter

   TCC joins more than 70,000 U.S. universities, colleges and technical schools now connected to every U.S. consulate and U.S. port of entry thanks to SEVIS.

   SEVIS, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, is an Internet-based system that educational institutions and the government can use to track foreign and exchange students.

   Prior to the U.S. Attorney General's announcement, May 10, 2002, educational institutes used paper documents to track foreign students. Time lags were common.

   Fraud was also common with the paper documents; students would apply to multiple schools, get multiple student-visa forms and then sell them for others to apply for visas.

   Schools that wanted access to the SEVIS system and the ability to issue student visas had to re-certify as an INS-approved institution. The shortcomings of the old reporting system were highlighted when, six months after the Sept. 11 hijackings, a Florida flight school received visa approval notification for two of the dead hijackers.

   "SEVIS is not new. It has been in planning for several years, but never got off the ground," Cathie Jackson, TCC director of admission and records, said.

   The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 mandated the development of a tracking system for foreign students that used current technologies, and in 1997, CIPRIS, an early version of SEVIS, was piloted.

   TCC has a stand-alone system to track foreign students. During the fall semester, an INS inspector visited TCC to inspect the international student files to ascertain compliance with documentation and admission requirements and to certify TCC to issue student-visa documentation.

   "It wasn't cursory," Brian Barrett, assistant director of admissions and records, said.

   TCC received approval Jan. 31, the original last official day of SEVIS approval. The INS extended the approval for an extra week since it had too many schools to process.