Read advance praise for International Education: The Neglected Dimension of Public Diplomacy Attracting International Students and Scholars
Restoring America's Status as a Magnet for the World's Future Leaders and Innovators When asked by the
National Journal to cite his biggest accomplishment as homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff said, "We have made it dramatically harder to get into the country if you are a bad person." That is indeed an essential success, but what Secretary Chertoff did not mention is that we have also made it dramatically harder to get into the country if you are a good person.
The next president will have to lead Congress and the American people to an understanding of the need to redress that balance, not because we all have short attention spans and have forgotten about security, as the secretary would have it, but because, with the perspective of time, we can recognize that openness to "good persons" is a crucial part of our security. Since 9/11, we have followed the disarming maxim that security trumps all: "When in doubt, keep them out." But that gets it wrong. We have forgotten that being an open country is not antithetical to our security, but rather part of it. What we really need are policies that maximize U.S. security
both by identifying and screening out those who wish us ill,
and by attracting and facilitating entry for the people we need to help us remain a great country. Whatever progress we may have made on the first part, we are not getting the second part right.
Until this century, the United States enjoyed the status of destination of choice for the world's international students and scholars, and we reaped great benefits from this status: the opportunity to educate the world's future leaders; the ability to attract the world's best talent to our universities and research institutes; the educational benefits that our students derived from foreign professors and from having other cultures represented on campus; and billions of dollars of spending in our economy.
This resource is now at risk. Although the United States still enrolls the largest number of international students simply because we have the largest higher education sector, by any relative measure U.S. competitiveness for international students has collapsed in this century as a result of vastly increased international competition, the unwelcoming environment created by post-9/11 security measures and anti-foreign attitudes, and the shattering of America's image in the world. International student enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities fell after 9/11 and stood at 582,984 in the academic year 2006-07; it would be well over 700,000—some 25 percent higher—if pre-9/11 growth rates had continued.
Meanwhile, the international student market is exploding. Data on international student mobility are notoriously unreliable, but according to available UNESCO estimates, 2.7 million international students studied outside their home countries in 2005 compared to 1.68 million in 1999—an increase of 60 percent. The standard projection cited in the field is that this number will reach 7.2 million by 2025.
Competitor countries are pursuing this market aggressively. Over the most recent four-year period for which comparative data are available (2003-2006), international student enrollment in the United Kingdom increased by more than 80,000, in France and Australia by nearly 60,000, in Germany and Japan by more than 20,000. Regional hubs are springing up in the Asia/Pacific region to serve the growing international student population from that area. The United States has shared in none of this growth. Only now is international student enrollment in U.S. colleges and universities returning to the level of five years ago, and we are still far from the robust growth curve that we enjoyed before 9/11.
What explains this situation? Simply put, competitor countries (and regions—the European Union is a big and successful competitor) recognize international students as an asset and are implementing comprehensive strategies to attract them; the United States, except at the rhetorical level, is not. The most competitive countries emphasize international recruitment as a matter of national policy. They have active outreach efforts, streamlined visa processes, and liberalized employment requirements to attract international students.
In the United States, coordination among the federal agencies responsible for the recruitment and admission of international students is minimal (with the exception of the relationship between the State and Education Departments under the current secretaries). Despite improvements, the visa process is still unnecessarily onerous. Name checks, especially for students with Arabic names, can hold up visa applications indefinitely because of similarities to names on various watch lists. Students complain of disrespectful treatment at ports of entry. Once in the country, they become subject to a monitoring system—financed with a fee, now being raised to $200, paid by the students—that was thrown up hastily after 9/11 and is easy to run afoul of, which can result in hassle, expense, and even deportation. During their sojourn in the United States, international students are often reluctant to travel internationally for academic conferences, vacations, or family visits, weddings, or funerals, because of uncertainty over being able to return. Efforts to make social security numbers and driver's licenses more secure have placed legitimate international students in a legal limbo where it is difficult-to-impossible for some to obtain these essential identifiers.
All of these security measures are important. But what is missing is an appreciation of the other side of the balance: When we turn away these students to our foreign competitors, we are denying future leaders an opportunity to know America, and we are sending them to know and develop life-long relationships with another country instead. There is a security cost to that too—and unless we find a way to program that factor into our decisionmaking, we are going to suffer a long-term net loss to our security and our international relationships in the name of protecting it.
The picture for international scholars and researchers is not much better. We lack comparative data on this population, and the number of scholars entering the United States is no longer declining. Nevertheless, according to the nation's leading scientific associations, international scientists increasingly feel that the process of getting into the United States is no longer worth the trouble. Too many are still subjected to burdensome, unnecessary, and repetitive visa interviews and security clearance procedures. Exchange visitor regulations written for an earlier era hamper their mobility. Artificial limits on work (H-1B) visas and green cards make the United States a less attractive place for the world's smartest people to explore the frontiers of science and create the next generation of knowledge.
We need what our competitors have: a comprehensive strategy for enhancing the attractiveness of the United States to international students and scholars. Such a strategy need not and should not lower the standards by which we seek to identify those who wish us ill and deny them access to the United States; on the contrary, it should permit the enhancement of those standards by reducing unnecessary and unproductive reviews and permitting greater focus where it is necessary, while facilitating the tradeoffs that will facilitate entry for legitimate and valued visitors. Action is required in three broad areas.
1. Coordination
There is currently no place in the government where the necessary tradeoffs can be made—where the relative costs and benefits of a proposal of an agency, bureau, or office to take an action that would restrict access to the United States or make us less attractive can be weighed. In our government, this can only be done in the White House. The next president should:
- Create a capability in the White House to coordinate the actions of the myriad federal agencies that affect the ability to international students and scholars to gain access to the United States and their treatment while they are here.
- Provide strong visa-policy guidance for State and DHS, which now share visa responsibility but whose lowest-common-denominator decision making render it impossible to achieve rational visa policy.
- Instruct the secretary of homeland security to rationalize and integrate the department's immigration functions and to strengthen the Office of Policy in order to infuse the agency with strong policy guidance.
2. Visa Reform
The State Department has done a good job of undoing the damage of the visa procedures that it imposed in the months following 9/11. But more needs to be done, and can only be done with the leadership of a new president. The next president should articulate and implement a balanced visa policy that facilitates access for students, scholars, and other valued visitors. The State Department should:
- Ask Congress to restore to the secretary of state the authority to grant U.S. consulates discretion to grant waivers of personal appearance (interviews) based on risk assessment, subject to Department of State guidance and approval.
- Refocus security clearances for scientists ("Mantis" reviews) on the most sensitive cases and eliminate them in cases where neither the applicant nor the applicant's country present concerns.
- Establish "fast-track visa reviews for frequent visitors and for students and scholars in legal status who leave the United States temporarily and require a new visa to return.
- Make better use of its overseas advising centers to facilitate visa reviews by prescreening applicants.
3. Immigration Reform
The tenor of the nation's current immigration debate is entirely antithetical to effective public diplomacy. A nation whose daily newspapers and television news broadcasts scream anti-foreign sentiments can hardly expect to have a positive impact on foreign audiences. The next president must exercise strong leadership on behalf of comprehensive immigration reform that addresses illegal immigration while honoring immigrants' contributions to our country. Immigration reform should include the following international education measures:
- Eliminate the legal requirement for applicants for student visas to demonstrate intent not to immigrate to the United States, at least for those pursuing degree programs. Students' inability to prove this negative is the biggest cause of visa denials. This requirement is anachronistic in an age when we in fact seek international talent for our economy and benefit greatly from those foreign graduates of our universities who choose to stay here, for a short while or longer.
- Remove or adjust unrealistic caps on temporary and permanent employment-based visa categories (H-1B visas and green cards). The unavailability of a path to jobs in our economy and, if desired, permanent residency constitutes a disincentive for international students to come to the United States.
- Amend the Real ID Act so that holders of student and exchange visitor visas in valid legal status do not face undue restrictions in obtaining driver's licenses.
- Permit short-term study (less than 90 days) on a tourist visa, as most other countries do. This would help revive America's intensive English industry, which functioned as a primary gateway to U.S. higher education for international students before it was decimated after 9/11.
Continue to the Strengthening Exchange and Volunteer-Service Programs section
