SEVIS Implementation: Beyond August 1

Thousands of U.S. colleges and universities are now using the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) to report information about their foreign students and scholars. NAFSA: Association of International Educators and its members appreciate measures recently undertaken by the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that legitimate students who encounter SEVIS-related problems at the port of entry can enter the country.

Concerns remain, however, about technical problems with the system. As of the August 1 deadline, SEVIS users were reporting the following:

Technical Bugs

SEVIS contains technical glitches. Some of those reported include inconsistencies between SEVIS-generated forms and data in the SEVIS system, and difficulties updating the records of students who transfer from one school to another. Technical problems have made tasks that INS/DHS estimated would take only minutes require hours or days of staff time to complete.

Data Reliability

The system's technical bugs can also affect data reliability. SEVIS users are not authorized to correct some errors in the system and are advised by the SEVIS Help Desk to instead create new records, thus creating multiple files for a single student in SEVIS. Such situations raise concerns about erroneous information in the system and the difficult process of correcting and ensuring the reliability of data in SEVIS.

Support and Training

Users continue to experience significant delays in obtaining responses from the SEVIS Help Desk. Wait times have been reported to stretch for weeks or months. Help Desk staff often give inconsistent information or cannot adequately answer questions that require familiarity with immigration regulations. Training of immigration officials who use SEVIS – at ports of entry, the Help Desk, and regional service centers – remains inadequate.

Getting SEVIS Right

While the August 1 deadline for mandatory compliance with SEVIS reporting requirements has passed, the need to make the system fully functional and effective remains. The system is unreliable and plagued with technical errors and glitches. On college campuses, coping with these issues draws time and resources away from important educational advising services. NAFSA renews its call, on an urgent basis, for DHS to take whatever steps are necessary to address these problems and make SEVIS truly operational.