COMMENTARY
Foreign brain drain extends terrorist attack on America
By John Griffin
Hawai'i has both a shared and a special problem dramatized by a former CIA director who said, "Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are on the brink of achieving an unanticipated victory, one that could have long-term consequences for the United States."
Associated Press library photo
Robert Gates, director of central intelligence from 1991 to 1993, is now president of Texas A&M University. He was writing in the New York Times about the severe problems foreign students often have in obtaining visas to study in the United States.
Chinese students protested in Beijing in September 2002 against the U.S. Embassy's refusal to issue them visas after many had been accepted for study abroad. Hawai'i universities have felt the impact.
Everybody agrees the 9/11 attacks showed a need for tighter visa regulations. But the severe steps taken or poorly implemented have downsides that hurt the United States to the point that even the Department of Homeland Security concedes the need for serious reform.
Here in Hawai'i, we are acutely aware of the negative economic effects of overzealous restrictions on foreign tourists. The problems confronting legitimate international students and professors in getting visas for study and meetings here are less appreciated, yet potentially more damaging to America in the long run.
In the past century, millions of bright young people from foreign countries have come to the United States to study. Many return home with experiences and relationships that enhance our image and ideals abroad. Many others stay in our country and enrich our culture and talent pools, especially in science and technology.
Now increasing numbers of such aspiring international students are barred, blocked or frustrated from coming here, and many resent losing their academic dream. They stay home or go for higher education to Britain, Australia, Singapore, France and other countries that recruit them. ("You Americans are now our best recruiter," said one Australian educator.)
That contributes to negative feelings about the United States that have grown internationally because of necessary and unnecessary actions by the Bush administration. And it has economic aspects that I'll touch on later.
Recently, I sat down in Manoa with a half-dozen officials who deal with foreign students at the University of Hawai'i and are rightfully disturbed at the national situation and its impact here. Some points made, often with graphic examples:
• International applications are down 27 percent for graduate students and 22 percent for undergraduates at Manoa (which has about 1,600 of the 2,800 foreign students on the 10 UH campuses). That is close to the average national decline reported for research universities.
• Because of an "expanding umbrella" of regulations and restrictions, those who advise foreign students and provide other services are too often forced to be enforcers and informers. The FBI not only calls, but comes to the campus. Student trust and admiration for American freedom can get lost along the way. Hard-earned adviser-student rapport can turn to distrust.
• Hawai'i's specialty is Asia and the Pacific. Visa restrictions affect most students from China and Southeast Asia. Pacific Islanders often face special problems, including having to travel a long way for now-required visa interviews.
• Unfunded federal mandates add a new layer of time-consuming red tape to international student programs. Congress is considering more oversight of foreign-student programs in a way that seems aimed at administrators and professors who don't agree with the administration.
• Not only do foreign students bring money into the Hawai'i economy, they enrich classroom discussion. Our young people benefit from different viewpoints.
• Here, as nationally, important international conferences are hindered and sometimes moved outside the country because our visa restrictions prevent important academics from attending. This is a special problem in Hawai'i, which fashions itself as a meeting place between east and west.
In Hawai'i, the situation goes beyond UH. Hawai'i Pacific University, a private institution with about 8,200 students from 112 countries, has seen a 10 percent drop in international students since 9/11. Its problem is not applications and acceptances — which remain steady or are rising — but visa restrictions that especially hit students from China, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as South Asia and the Middle East.
The federally supported East-West Center sponsors several hundred students at UH. Those from Asia have problems with long delays in getting visas. Some can't go home for the summer because they fear new U.S. restrictions will block or delay their return.
Some of the larger aspects of the quiet scandal about the slowdown and stoppage in foreign-student visas were touched on recently by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. He too noted the loss of a new generation of international talent that would go home and enrich their societies or stay and help our economy with needed science and technology. He added:
"We are actually in the middle of two struggles right now. One is against the Islamic terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere, and the other is a competitiveness-and-innovation struggle against India, China, Japan and their neighbors. ... We are completely ignoring the latter. We have got to get our focus back in balance, not to mention our budget."
What's to be done?
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Part of the answer is for the United States to train more of its own young people in science and technology, areas where we lag behind other countries in student numbers to an alarming degree.
The University of Hawaii at Manoa has seen international student applications drop by about a quarter under tougher visa regulations. International conferences in Hawai'i also have been affected.
But we will still need talented young people from other countries to join others who have stayed and are enriching our economy. In an age of globalism, the United States, we of all countries, cannot be an island.
Reforms are urgently needed in the short term to relax and expedite our student visa situation. I don't doubt there may be a few foreign student revolutionaries, and maybe some revolutionaries posing as students. But by and large, foreign students are relatively few in number (perhaps 2 percent of total visas, some say), and important in impact. Because they come with records and detailed applications, they are a group of foreigners we know most about.
Some of the best news I have seen in recent days was the testimony before Congress of two high-ranking Bush administration officials about the need to ease restrictions on foreign travel to the United States.
Secretary of State Colin Powell talked most about tourism, noting a 30 percent decline in overseas visitors to the United States, saying, "This hurts us. It's not serving our interests. And so we really do have to work on it."
But he and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also touched on student and other academic visa problems. Said Ridge of the post-9/11 climate: "Two years have elapsed. We've seen the consequences of some of these changes. We have to be serious about reviewing."
I hope Washington is not only recognizing how overstrict visa restrictions are hurting us at home and abroad, but also is prepared to block the Osama victory that Gates and others fear.
John Griffin is former editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages and a frequent contributor.
