Limiting Foreign Student Entries in Sanctuary Jurisdictions

WASHINGTON, June 22, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies examines the administration's option of limiting foreign student entries and immigration activities in "sanctuary" jurisdictions as a potential federal response to state and local obstruction of immigration enforcement. This could be especially important if California's SB54 – with its stringent anti-cooperation requirements – is passed and signed into law. SB54 has been approved by the Senate and is currently before the Assembly.

If SB54 blocks the Cal State and California Community College systems' required cooperation with ICE, DHS may be forced to decertify them for purposes of admitting foreign students.

Andrew Arthur, the Center's Resident Fellow in Law and Policy and author of the report, stated, "If the State of California prevents schools from satisfying their obligations under federal immigration law, then DHS needs to consider whether those schools should be allowed to maintain their certifications to accept foreign students."

View the entire report at: http://cis.org/Limiting-Foreign-Student-Visas-in-Sanctuaries

Foreign student visas are available only to people who will be attending schools certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), a component of the ICE National Security Investigations Division. By regulation, SEVP-certified schools must designate school officials to regularly provide information to ICE to verify that the foreign students are maintaining their status while in the country, and to notify ICE when those students are not.

This requirement ensures that the government has essential data on those students necessary for national security and immigration-enforcement purposes. This is especially important given the fact that, as DHS recently reported, almost three percent of all foreign students whose authorized status was supposed to end in FY 2016 are suspected of overstaying and illegally remaining in the United States.

Contact: Marguerite Telford 
202-466-8185, [email protected]  

SOURCE Center for Immigration Studies