AMHERST, MASS.
Int'l students fight 'fee for spy' plan
By Bryan G. Pfeifer
Amherst, Mass.
In a heartening display of anti-racist unity
and solidarity Dec. 11, students and their allies denounced the
University of Massachusetts-Amherst administration's plans to
impose a new fee for international graduate students in the
spring semester. There are approximately 6,000 graduate
students attending UMass-Amherst, 50 percent of them
international students.
A noon news conference during finals week organized by the
Graduate Employ ees Organization, the union that represents
over 2,500 graduate students on campus, drew a
standing-room-only crowd of over 125 with only a few days'
notice.
Those attending were in no mood to negotiate with the
administration.
"I'm not going to pay the fee. I'm willing to take this as
far as I can," said Zixul "George" Liu, a Chinese student
majoring in communications and a GEO organizer.
The planned $65-per-semester fee is only for international
students. Its purpose is to fund a new program called the
Student and Exchange Visitor Inform ation System, or SEVIS.
This fee would be in addition to an already federally mandated
$100 tax on international students to pay for SEVIS.
SEVIS is a database that links colleges and universities to
the Department of Homeland Security. It monitors the activities
of all international students, including home location, classes
taken, hours work ed, status of bills, and any other
information the department deems necessary. The university
updates the database in real time.
If international students don't comply with SEVIS--for
instance, by not updating where they are living or falling out
of good standing with the university--they could be considered
felons by the State Depart ment and be arrested or
deported.
SEVIS was in the federal planning stages for several years
to track international students and staff. After Sept. 11,
2001, SEVIS was mandated under the USA Patriot Act. The means
to fund it was not mandated.
International students, under various racist measures in the
Patriot Act and other federal and state laws, are already
restrict ed to 20 hours of work per week, only one job and
other onerous measures. With cost-of-living expenses such as
child care and housing rising every semester, international
students face severe hurdles to simply stay afloat, much less
obtain an education.
"Not only are international students, of which I am one,
being forced to pay for their own surveillance, but they are
being discriminated against in the campus community," said
Ibrahim Dahlstrom-Hakki, secretary treasurer of the GEO/UAW, a
doc toral student in psychology and international student from
Jordan.
In keeping with the spirit of those atten d ing the press
conference, GEO issued its "International Student Fee State
ment" to the UMass community. Every member of the union's
executive board signed the statement, which said in part, "In
keeping with the vision statement of the University, we insist
that the Chan cellor immediately revoke the Interna tional
Student Fee scheduled for next semester."
Liu and others also reminded the administration and those in
attendance that the town of Amherst has passed a resolution
opposing the Patriot Act and has requested that all city
departments, businesses and organizations refuse to comply with
any of the act's provisions.
Dahlstrom-Hakki and others outlined the increasingly brutal
attacks on students of color, including international students,
in the recent period. These include effectively dismantling the
campus's affirmative action program, eliminating funding for
English as a Second Language training, raising TOEFL (written
English proficiency scores for incoming students) require
ments, and eliminating advising offices and programs, which are
often a life-sustaining component of an oppressed student's
life.
After the news conference a committee of graduate students
and their allies convened to organize a campaign composed of
various strategies and tactics to have the fee repealed.
Similar struggles have been waged at the University of
Chicago, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the State Univer
sity of New York-Binghamton.
While fighting back against this most recent attack, most
students have no illusions about the U.S. national security
strategy and its historical evolution from the beginning of the
20th century through the McCarthy period up to the present.
Puerto Rican graduate student Rene Gonzalez, a leader in the
African, Latino/a, Asian American, Native American and Arab
American organization, summed up the most recent U.S. strategy:
"It's part of a domestic component to an imperial foreign
policy."
A petition to "Repeal the UMass Surveillance Fee" can be
signed at: www.geouaw.org.
For more information, visit www.visareform.net.
Reprinted from the Dec. 25, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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