CAR and Immigration NICAR 2003, Charlotte Sarah Cohen, The Washington Post, cohensh@washpost.com The Agency Formerly Known as INS and the Student Visa program After the first attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, Congress instructed the Immigration and Naturalization Service to improve the tracking, enfocement and issuance of student visas. Nearly a decade later, the mandated new system was imminent, just when the INS was moved to the new Department of Homeland Security and split into two major pieces. In January 2003, The Washington Post ran, “INS Moves to Plug Student Visa Leaks” -a story partly about a group of 23 language schools in the Los Angeles area that accounted for 1 of every 50 student visas in the U.S. -- 33,000 over five years. The story was based partly on a series of data files (it’s hard to call them “databases” in most cases) dribbled out from the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s FOIA office over nine months. One set of spreadsheets listed the more than 65,000 schools allowed to issue documents needed to enter this country and stay for up to five years -- the schools didn’t have to be accredited and could be on the list of schools banned by Dept. of Education to take federal funds. INS used its own criteria to approve the schools. Another listed counts of students by school for each year from 1996 through the middle of 2002, though the agency declined to provide the school code it uses, only the name in its database (more on that later). The last database, which was the only one that actually was provided in pure data form, listed each student visa that was a “change of status” -- about 7 percent of the total visas issued over more than five years. That final database contained many details we doubted we’d get about the I-20s: nationality, length of stay, date of birth and the name of the school official who signed the form. There’s no point in going into much more detail. The database is defuct now, and INS acknowledged that it was so rife with errors that following individual students was impossible. (It did not, however, contest the general results we obtained from our analysis. We were careful not to make it sound more precise than it was.) Beginning in February, the old INS, which has now been absorbed into the Homeland Security Department, began insisting that educational institutions use its new Student Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. The new, integrated system seeks to to track more accurately both schools and their students. SEVIS contains: “I-20s” - The form issued by schools that a student can convert to a visa at embassies around the world or at immigration centers here. It contains the code number for the school (more about that later), the name of the school, information about the student, and information about the planned “course of study”. A “designated school official,” or DSO, is required to sign the form. A school can have no more than three DSOs at a time and must inform INS who they are. This is the document that effectively lets anyone stay in the country for up to five years. There are separate rules for “F”, “M”, and “J” visas. The Post only looked at the first two, which are for academic programs (including language schools), and trade schools (like flight schools). “I-17” data -- This is the form that schools fill out, and the supporting information they provide, to get permission to issue I-20s. The school is required to provide information on the curriculum, the physical facilities and the officials who work there. There is no criminal background check, though the former INS says it investigated trade and language schools more carefully than accredited academic institutions. Accreditation can allow the school to bypass stringent reviews. Follow-up data: Schools are required to report when a student arrives for class. They are supposed to alert the government when a student fails to enroll or switches to parttime, since the visa is supposed to be revoked. That’s the theory. In reality, INS has never done any of the required monitoring. I-20s had no unique number on them, so once they were issued they could be freely copied. A student could get as many I-20s as he wanted. The State Department officials in embassies and the Customs Service agents in the airports didn’t even have a list of the schools approved by the agency to accept students. Schools were supposed to be visited before obtaining the right to enroll foreign students. Most never were. Schools were supposed to turn over enrollment records to INS when asked, but the INS only asked once in the past 15 years. Even then, it had no idea what to do with the information, so it told schools that were voluntarily reporting no-shows to stop. Leading up to the new system, INS never issued guidelines for trade schools, so it automatically rejected all of their applications at first, but then had to allow them to keep issuing visas for some period. Contractors visited some language schools, but told them of the appointments ahead of time and spent only a couple of hours on site reviewing files selected by school employees. By the time of the switchover to the new system, only about a quarter of the schools actively enrolling foreign students had been approved; the agency had denied no applications. Now that INS has been split in half, with visas “immigrant services” in one agency, and enforcement in another, the duties of collecting and using the data the government collects have been split. Sources for local immigration data Immigration stores run the gamut from abuses of power by officials who have total control over the lives of immigrants, to failure to follow laws intended to protect borders, to the vast demographic changes that a new wave of immigrants has brought to communities around the country. In 2002, Washington Post reporter Anne Hull wrote a 4-part series on the vast changes that the wave had brought to the Atlanta area. Her story, “Rim of the New World”, focused on four young immigrants who had settled in the Atlanta area and helped change the historically black and white metropolitan area. It was reported mainly through in-depth interviews. But Hull’s sources, and her initial reporting, used a lot of the available local area information on immigration that is available throughout the U.S. To make it simple, the Urban Institute will soon publish a report, funded by the Anna E. Casey Foundation, called The New Neighbors, A Users Guide to Data on Immigrants in U.S. Communities. Jeff Passel, one of the authors, agreed to share an early release for our conference. I’ve attached his chart of major sources. The most important recent change to the standard datasets is the redaction of Zip codes in the INS Legal Immigration public use file -- the one contained in the NICAR collection and the source of many local stories on the range of immigration. However, Passal has said that the statistical chief of the old INS has agreed to consider creating basic counts of immigration by country of origin, Zip code and year. Although we know of no one who has requested it formally, there is some hope that the local nature of this dataset, which includes permanent resident visas issued each year, might be available again. Preliminary Draft Do Not Quote or Cite without Permission Figure 8: Data Sources on Immigrants for Local Areas Data source and availability Immigrant population identifiers Units of geography Data on immigrants Data quality/ other problems Census 2000 Summary File 3 (SF 3) (1) Foreign-born (citizenship, place of birth, year of entry) (2) Race and ethnicity (3) Language spoken at home (4) English proficiency National, states, counties, metropolitan areas, cities, towns, Census tracts, block groups Housing, employment, education, income, poverty, family structure Tabulations pre-defined by Census bureau, topics limited Census 2000 1 and 5 percent Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) Same as Summary File 3 National, states, some counties and metropolitan areas, including some jurisdictions below metropolitan level. Same as Summary File 3 Individual records allow user-defined tabulations AVAILABLE SPRING OR SUMMER 2003 Areas defined: 1% file: 100,000+ pop. 5% file: 500,000+ pop. Census 2000 and 2001 Supplementary Survey (C2SS) Same as Census 2000 National, states, some metropolitan areas Same as Census 2000 PUMS have individual records that allow user-defined tabulations. Profiles include only pre-defined tabulations. American Community Survey (ACS) – annual Same as Census 2000 and C2SS Same as C2SS Same as Census 2000 and C2SS Same as C2SS. (1) Foreign-born (citizenship, place of birth, year of entry) (2) Race and ethnicity National, some states, major metropolitan areas and large counties (limited samples) More workforce and income measures but fewer housing measures than Census 2000 Individual records allow user-defined tabulations SCHEDULED for 2003 Current Population Survey (CPS) – annual MARCH 1994-2002 The New Neighbors — 24 — January 2003 Preliminary Draft Do Not Quote or Cite without Permission Figure 8: Data Sources on Immigrants for Local Areas (continued) Data source and availability Immigrant population identifiers Units of Geography Data on immigrants Data quality/ other problems INS admissions data – annual Legal immigrants: place of birth, year of entry, immigration status at admission National, states, counties, ZIP codes (through 1998) metro areas (1999-2000) Counts of immigrants admitted, legal status and residence only Only legal immigrants; “intended residence” may be inaccurate; information on first U.S. residence only Immigrant children entering US in last 3 years, by place of birth School districts, possibly individual schools Counts of foreign-born students in the U.S. for 3 years or less only Omits 2 generation children, not all districts keep records Public School Registration Data Varies by school district School districts, possibly individual schools Counts of foreign-born students, possibly by country of birth or primary language Not all districts keep records, access may be restricted to protect privacy Health Department Vital Records Mother’s ethnicity, race, place of birth; Father’s race and ethnicity States, counties, possibly cities and Census tracts Mother’s and father’s age, education and other demographics; birth weight of child Missing values on place of birth, limited choices for place of birth/ ethnicity, access may be restricted to protect privacy Social Service Agencies Data Varies by agency States, counties, service areas Counts of immigrants receiving benefits and services Limited to population receiving services FISCAL YEARS 1972-2000 Title III (No Child Left Behind Act), previously in Emergency Immigrant Education Program (EIEP) – annual nd LAST SCHOOL YEAR The New Neighbors — 25 — January 2003