Hoping to better track foreign visitors and keep out would-be terrorists, immigration officials are tightening student visa rules and proposing shorter US trips for tourists and business travelers.
Effective immediately, any foreigner wishing to study in the US must have an approved student visa before taking courses, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said Monday.
The INS also is proposing to restrict tourists and business travelers to 30-day visits, down from the current six months.
The INS has been under intense scrutiny since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with some in Congress calling for the agency to be dismantled. Supporters and critics agree that the agency is burdened with conflicting missions to help immigrants enter and stay in the country and to identify and keep out those who try to enter illegally or who may pose a danger.
The restrictions on travelers potentially could affect more than 2 million visits to the US a year and were immediately criticized by people in the travel industry.
``Any time we make it more difficult -- erect barriers or tighten barriers -- for people to come into our country, we give them incentive to go someplace else,'' said Elise Wander of the Travel Industry Association of America.
The INS says it had 10 million tourist visa admissions to the US in 2000, the latest year with available data. In three quarters of those admissions, the visitors stayed less than a month. In 2.5 million cases, business travelers stayed an average 13 days.
``The reason to make these changes is to increase our control on who is coming in and increase our awareness of what they intend to do while here,'' said INS spokesman Bill Strassberger.
Visitors would have to show unexpected or compelling reasons for an extension of a travel visa, such as the need for medical treatment or a delay in completing a business matter, Strassberger said. The maximum length of a visa extension would be reduced from one year to six months.
Before Sept. 11, INS Commissioner James Ziglar's focus was on improving the agency's service and cutting waiting times for immigration benefits. Those remain priorities, but under pressure from Congress -- especially since the attacks -- Ziglar has been forced to give precedence to keeping better track of foreign visitors and tightening immigration policies.
``These new rules strike the appropriate balance between INS' mission to ensure that our nation's immigration laws are followed and stop illegal immigration and our desire to welcome legitimate visitors to the United States,'' Ziglar said.
The INS believes requiring approval before students enroll will ensure they have received appropriate security checks before entering the country.
The INS is also proposing that people who want to switch from a tourist or business visa to a student visa return to their home country to apply. A person now can switch while in the US. In return, the INS says it would speed up decisions on such requests, issuing them within 30 days.
Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta of Egypt and Marwan Al-Shehhi of the United Arab Emirates, came to the US on visitor visas and later applied for student visas. They began training at a Florida flight school in July 2000, more than a year before the INS approved their student visas.
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