Abstract
This paper discusses the impact September 11, 2001 has on foreign students pursuing academics in the United States. Data from the National Science Foundation’s research is used to identify changes in academic trends, identifying and separating the policy trends chronologically into two halves separated by those events. The paper makes use of contemporary social research, particularly that of Freeman and Kurtzman. Through their collective works this paper exposes indicators that long-term national security goals are being jeopardized for short-term security goals as a result of exclusionary policies that inhibit immigration from highly skilled and educated workers from certain states. The paper concludes by proposing a new goal-oriented model that will responds to the economic and security shortcomings of pre-9/11and post-911 immigration policy.
Introduction
As the United States loses its status as the premiere destination for foreign students (as well as diversity and skilled labor), there is a rising call for meditation and retrospection: is the loss of these assets worth the promise of security? Moreover, will restrictionist academic policies achieve long term security goals? This critical juncture in US history demands an examination of the pre-9/11 immigration environment juxtaposed against the post-9/11 immigration environment for the sake of evaluating the differences in visa issuance in the United States. Although recent years have seen a nominal uptick in undergraduate and graduate applications to US academic institutions, the long-lasting effects of restrictive policies adopted after the events of 9/11 are only now becoming evident. This paper is divided chronologically between the pre-9/11 era and the post-9/11 era, with each section addressing questions of economy and security in the academic sphere. After this discussion the paper will conclude by addressing two chief areas of interest:
- US economic interests in the realm of academics.
- The fallout of US of national security policies in academics.
Joseph S. Nye speaks of two different types of power, classifying them as “hard power” and “soft power.” Hard power is described as a nation’s ability to influence other nations by means of brute force, namely military means. Soft power is thus described as a nation’s ability to influence other nations by means other than military force, which can be diplomatic, cultural, economic, social, religious, and so on. For decades, the United States has exercised global supremacy by predominantly by way of hard power; consider, for instance, the regularity of American war or police actions abroad and it becomes apparent that the United States has enjoyed untouchable sovereignty throughout the latter-half of the 20th century, using hard power to hedge its economic interests by building a global network of military bases across hundreds of nations. The United States’ conception of hard power is uniquely intertwined with Pentagon programs, placing a remarkable amount of emphasis on research and development, with an estimated $275 billion spent annually on research and development projects, many of which are directly linked to defense projects.
Examining the Data
According to estimates made by the National Science Foundation, international enrollments at U.S. academic institutions increased steadily from the 1950s until the early 2000s, rising from 1.4 percent to 4.1 percent of the total student body. Prior to 9/11, the amount of information available about the application, admission and enrollment of foreign students into American universities was limited. Much of the limitation comes from the National Science Foundation’s ambiguous original polling terms its systems used in order to differentiate between first-time enrollment and continuing foreign students. This poses a serious qualitative hindrance to the long-term value of these polling numbers and limits the ability of future social scientists to meta synthesize their efforts into new works, but it doesn’t seriously diminish the value of the data itself, nor does it diminish the importance of having numbers—in this case, rough numbers– to work with throughout a discourse on foreign population trends in American institutions. Therefore it becomes essential for the reader to acknowledge that the data sets are unable to extrapolate information regarding whether a student is beginning studies for the first year or whether the student is studying for the sixth year, which is problematic for anyone attempting to gather absolute data regarding the foreign student population.
However, even in the face of this limitation, the data will still show trends regarding foreign populations in American academic institutions, albeit potentially with some degree of time delay, which is evident by comparing the native graduate student population against foreign graduate student population. Even without the ability to know which academic level a student is at in regards to his or studies, the National Science Foundation’s data is able to provide a broad picture of foreign population trends that are inhibited mostly by the difficulty of extracting specific information pertaining to the population of a specific year. This information will provide an otherwise impossible look into the effects policies such as the IRCA and Patriot Act have on foreign students interested in pursuing studies in the United States, and though flawed, is the only means by which these policies can be quantitatively compared.
Another limitation of the data is the ways in which races and ethnicities have been broadly generalized into categories that provide only the vaguest value in this case study, particularly when examining students from a particular region. For instance, for the purposes of this case-study and many others, it is not enough to define a category for Asian students, considering that category would include Japanese, Vietnamese, and Afghan people. Furthermore, the National Science Foundation data is limited to races common to the Americas and exclusionary to all else: white, black, Asian/pacific islander, Hispanic, and other. The absence of highly specific data (in the public realm, at least) regarding the national origins of inbound foreign students prevents researchers and policy-makers from knowing the true character of academic immigration from nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Yemen, etc. Instead, the data is limited to generalized ethnicities from a handful of regions, and becomes a shortcoming to the case study.
Comparing resident citizens with foreign students adds perspective to these graphs, showing a relativity between domestic and international interest in the academic sector, and also acts as a control; the domestic students are somewhat insulated to the effects of foreign policy within the academic realm, and are therefore more likely to reflect swings in the social and economic environment. Although the two populations would remain tied to one another in the absence of these variables, their existences cause (sometimes wide) variations in growth patterns and serve as good indicators of the timeliness and extent of economic, political and social conditions.
The data reveals an interesting abnormality at precisely the 2002-2003 mark that stands out from the trends being set over the previous decade. Whereas a relatively flat incline (for domestic and foreign students) would reflect the steady growth of academic institutions that are meeting the demands of a growing population, fluctuations in these graphs can indicate many things: variations in students’ economic wherewithal, social emphasis on education, and policies that regulate the input/output of foreign students by way of quotas and preferences. Instead, a myriad of factors affect the yearly growth (and decline) of American and foreign students attending colleges and universities. The data provided by the National Science Foundation visually identifies several timespans when foreign enrollment in schools does not match domestic enrollment in terms of growth. The figures show foreign enrollment in schools rising dramatically, reaching an apex between the years 1999 and 2001, then falling dramatically between 2002 and 2003 to a modest rate of 1.3% growth. By 2003 and 2004 growth dropped to -2.5%, while domestic attendance continued to grow at a modest rate of between 1% and 2%.
It should be mentioned that the growth of the foreign student population in the United States greatly exceeded the growth of domestic students over most of the 13 year timespan with exception of the periods from 1993 through 1996, and 2003 through 2006, and shows much greater variation on the y-axis than its domestic counterpart which maintains relatively modest growth throughout most of the graph. Importantly, the graph shows a strong connection to US policies that affected foreign students, notably falling to shallow numbers after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, then again after the Patriot Act of 2001.
Pre 9/11
Just as German scientists strengthened the ranks of US scientific research following the close of World War II, it is important to note that the US policy has not always discriminated against academic foreigners. In the post cold war period prior to 9/11 students from nations with strained US ties were treated in the same manner as students from nations with friendly ties, and subjected to the same general levels of scrutiny by those acting on behalf of national security. Despite instances of personal discrimination, at the national level it was understood that a national ideology was not necessarily the ideology of the individual. One cannot presume that national ideologies are all-inclusive; in fact, the existences of political dissidents have shaped American foreign policy towards particular immigrant groups for decades, and the populations of these dissidents in the United States are living proof. There is an element of public sympathy for casualties of many of the dissidents of its externalized conflicts: Russian, Polish, Cuban, Hmong, Jewish and Vietnamese refugees (to name a few) who faced political hostilities in their native countries due to ideological friction often relocated to the United States. Historically, the academic sector has provided an avenue for refugees fleeing unstable countries in the contemporary arena, falling in line with much of the research done by Dreher and Krieger. This research defines many of the reasons why students from Islamic countries choose to study in the United States—not as an act of surreptitious hostility, but rather as an expression of ideological curiosity. Kurtzman et. al. writes:
“…like other minority groups in American history, Muslim-Americans are suspected of harboring extremists of imperfect loyalty to the United States, of an inability to assimilate to dominant culture – similar suspicions surrounded German-Americans during World War I, Italian-Americans durinf the Anarchist and Red Scares of the late 19th and early 20th century, and Japanese-Americans during World War II, among other episodes…”
As their research discovered, terrorism in originating countries pushed academics and skilled workers to the United States long before 9/11. A prime, classic example of academic refugees can be found in the very foundation of the Frankfurt School, which reflects a history of academics relocating in the United States in reaction to the politically stifling conditions in Germany. Terrorism is not, nor has it ever been, limited to American victimization. Long before it became a media spectacle characterized by airplanes and towers, cast in the city of New York, it was an everyday occurrence happening worldwide, albeit on a much smaller scale. Imagining that terrorism is rooted in an American history is an ethnocentric spin that discounts much of the violence that occurred worldwide prior to contemporary events.
Post 9/11
“All of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States using various immigrant visas, some perfectly in order and others obtained fraudulently…the security of national borders and the effectiveness of national policies designed to foster the settlement of immigrants came under unusually close scrutiny across Western Democracies.”
The nature of immigration policy changed drastically after September 11 in large part due to an increased emphasis on national security, characterized by the Patriot Act and implemented by the department of Homeland Security. The primary means by which the United States government went about securing immigration control policies involved streamlining perceived incongruences within the intelligence community, which essentially has the effect of expanding the border police’s tasks to include identifying dangerous individuals before they arrive at the border. The introduction of the department of Homeland Security and its role in gathering information, analyzing, and distributing it between departments such as the Department of Defense, Transportation Security Administration, Department of Education, Immigration and Naturalization Services, and Federal Bureau of Investigation marked the emergence of a new organization intended to prevent terrorists from entering the US border, which necessitated collaboration on a grand scale. This new intelligence-gathering apparatus can be perceived as an additional “layer” of protection, shielding citizens from threats long before they arrive at the border, and even once they’ve crossed over.11 Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security was instrumental in the creation of SEVIS, a computer program designed to track foreign students and makes collected data available to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the Federal Burau of Investigation.
As the United States struggles in an economic slump some have called the “great recession,” it becomes necessary ask whether foreign students are declining study in the United States because of economic decline, whether the economic decline is a result of students declining to study in the United States, or in the worst case, both. The lasting effect of post-9/11 policies on the economy can be seen as the United States struggles to recruit prime scientific talent from countries that have historically produced top tier researchers, but now lag behind. A number of studies have concluded a decline in US-bound immigration from countries such as Germany and Indonesia as a result of contemporary foreign policies.13 The economic decline is not limited solely to a lack of talent in the research and development sectors, but it is certainly a contributor; moreover, the 9/11 model does encourage an element of feedback loop which is causing elements of the current economic to grow worse.
Prior to 9/11, the nature of immigration reform was largely characterized by partisan economics in the US political arena.14 Populations will move to locations that better suit their economic, political and social needs when they have the means available, as has been historically evidenced by refugees seeking better living conditions in the United States. In recent years, education has provided the academic means by which many individuals leave their home countries in favor of their desired country, particularly if terrorism represents a regular threat within their home nation. It thus becomes necessary to consider the influx of students from Islamic countries and deliberate on the policies at hand in order to determine whether excluding them by way of increased scrutiny actually serves the purposes of improving national security.
Conclusions
Six months after the events of September 11th, two of the deceased hijackers were lucky enough to have their visas renewed. The public was outraged. Attorney General John Ashcroft, furious of this lack of oversight in the visa issuance process ordered an investigation into INS policies and practices, followed by congressional action aimed at securing the nation against the possibility of recurrence. The concomitant policies affected the processes of academic visa issuance and greatly restricted the throughput of foreign students through American academic institutions. As the attendance of foreign students dropped, policymakers were left with the side effects of reactionary policy making. In addition to the added costs of bureaucracy, nearly 12.3 billion dollars in foreign monies were instantly cut from the economy. Although publicly students are still encouraged to study in the United States, reality shows that they face prolonged visa delays and the likelihood of rejection altogether. Students who would have studied in the United States are increasingly diverting their applications to other English speaking countries such as Canada, Great Britain, and Australia, nations which had been vying for international students for years prior to the September 11 attacks. In addition, “anecdotal reports suggest that British universities have not seen a drop-off in Middle Eastern students, says Neil Kemp, director of education for the British Council.”We’ve been growing the overall non-European students between 12 and 15 percent per annum,” he says.”
There is a widespread perception that American foreign policy was radically shifted as a result of the events of 9/11. There can be no doubt that policies did change as a result of that period; however, the change can hardly be considered radical: in true reactionary fashion the United States created new institutions, changed policies, and created an environment different from the environment of September 10, 2011—yet, the environment wasn’t new in a radical sense. If the United States’ path were an axis, the new policies merely shifted along a single track, hardly breaking into any new dimension.18 The reality that formed in the dust of those waking days was highly restrictionist, but hardly new. Any number of despotic tyrants and banana republics have succeeded at isolationism, but few liberal democratic countries have so drastically shifted decades of precedence in kneejerk reaction. As an asynchronous war on terror emerged, the United States’ interpretation of power itself became the subject of discussion. The notion of “boots on the ground” versus “diplomatic relations” was ever relevant as social scientists, such as Friedman, coined the terms “hard power” and “soft power.” The Bush administration’s emphasis on the former notion of power—the implementation of restrictionist policies–had the immediate appearances of success, but the long-term effects of those policies are only now beginning to unfold. Data shows that “foreign student enrollment peaked…in 2002-2003, the year the visa restrictions took effect. It dropped steadily each of the next three years…” As students from foreign countries hesitated to enroll in American schools, the US met with harsh, unforeseen side-effects, namely, declines in the United States’ ability to recruit the best research and development minds from academic institutions (hard power), and a weakening base from which to draw cultural experts (soft power). Fully 50 percent of undergraduate students stay in the US for a period of time after graduation; 70 % of graduate students stay on for more than five years after they finish studies—yet these workers are increasingly unable to gain entry in the first place.
Any attempt to separate an economic history of the United States from the migrant history will fail, as the two are uniquely intertwined as a result of a colonial/expansionist past that strongly depended on foreign labor initially for manufacturing and service before settling on technology. For decades, the United States enjoyed a strong inflow of academic minds which were eager to bolster the enrollment records of academic institutions as well as the high-tech workforce by way of student visas which transferred easily into H-1B visas. The United States is considered the enticing premiere destination for young academic hopefuls wanting to share an international learning experience with colleagues from across the globe. Each year American universities receive tens of thousands of applications from prospective foreign students; as of 2005, nearly 140,000 graduate students were in the country doing research in science and engineering disciplines. A strong economy coupled with favorable foreign policies intended to recruit the brightest minds for high-tech research in bustling American firms formed a self-perpetuating model that propelled the United States ahead of other Western nations in regards to economic and cultural capital accumulation. Yet, that model is being challenged as new policies exclude top quality researchers from participating in the US academic sector.
The 9/11 model of student immigration has kept the United States safe, but at considerable costs. As Ewing wrote, “it would be a shame if, in the name of security, we were to close the door to immigrants who come here to work and build a better life for themselves and their families.” It should not take a second climactic event for the United States to reevaluate the impacts of contemporary policies in this sphere; instead, a continuous refinement aimed at meeting concise goals can exemplify the creativity and ingenuity of good policy-making. Recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the old model and the 9/11 model will help orient policymakers toward a composite goal that meets modern social, academic, and economic needs.
The ideal new model recognizes the need for national security, but discounts the efficacy of creating restrictionist policies that preclude foreign nationals from participating in US culture. It encourages immigration, particularly from countries which share tied relations with the United States in order to draw upon historical, linguistic and cultural ties in addition to scientific know-how. It encourages implementing uniformity in security practices in order to avoid perceived injustices on behalf of minorities.
Foreign students coming from nations that are at odds with the United States bring more than intellectual capital—they bring linguistic, historical, and political capital, an asset that can be transformed into “soft power.” The current practices have a tendency to single out and exclude foreigners, including students, who are from Islamic countries under the pretense of national security, when in fact their unique backgrounds may provide the cultural rapport that is necessary to cross bridges and form ties with their native countries. Instead, the United States has adopted provisions that require male citizens from select Muslim countries to register with Immigration and Naturalization Service for the purposes of fingerprinting, photographing, and an interview.
“…the 25 countries selected by the U.S. government for special scrutiny because of their perceived ties to terrorist groups are sending far fewer students here than they did two years ago. Male students between the ages of 16 and 45 from these countries must go through special registration procedures upon arrival in the United States, including fingerprinting, which have led many of them to complain that they are being treated like criminals.”
These practices are not problematic in of themselves, yet the deliberate biases against students from these countries are troubling. If all immigrants were subject to the same scrutiny, the policy would not appear discriminatory; however, at the present there is fear and perceived inequality. Many students from Islamic countries are allowed into the country with student visas and later choose to apply for citizenship, yet their initial entries into the United States are marked by anxiety and fear as the securitization process shores up personal data that will be permanently stored. Fear, as the root of terrorism, is the foundation upon which ill-planned reactionary practices are implemented. Body-Gendrot makes the connect and distinction between progressive and restrictionist policies, saying,
“…some states act on risks without acknowledging that they are doing so via the savoir faire of intelligence services and specialized judges, while others regularly warn the public about active plots and publicize the security measures that they take.”
This is to say, the United States has taken a few steps down one path at the juncture created by September 11, but there were, and will continue to be, a myriad of responses to terrorism that do not have negative repercussions in the spheres of academia or the economy. At this point, it becomes necessary to perceive the “second axis,” to look beyond the notion of “less restrictionism versus more restrictionism” in order to consider new political dynamics that will strengthen nations’ fiscal, social, and security needs.
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