Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion On Foreign Students National Security 20240714

Mark good morning. My name is mark krikorian, the executive director of the center for immigration studies, and we are doing this panel on the issue of the Foreign Student Program. The admission of foreign students and scholars is a federal Government Program like any other, farm subsidies or what have you, and it is almost exclusively discussed in positive terms, but in fact like any other Government Program, it has benefits but also costs. Pluses and minuses. The challenges that come from it, whether related to National Security or other issues, are never addressed. We want to have a panel that will try to introduce balance into this discussion of the Foreign Student Programs. Our first speaker is dan cadman, a center fellow, a veteran of ins and dhs, and he has a report on the table outside and also online on the National Security challenges that Foreign Student Program poses. Our second speaker is another fellow from the center, david north, who has been doing immigration policy longer than anyone else, since the johnson administration. I tease him and say that is Lyndon Johnson not andrew johnson, but it is a long time. He will be talking about one of the permutations in the Foreign Student Program called Optional Practical Training Program. Jessica vaughan our director of policy studies is going to be giving us numbers on the scope of this Government Program, the failures of it, specifically in the sense of the set over stays, people admitted on temporary visas but who never leave. Also give us all if he recommendations. After that, we will take some q a if there are any questions. Lets start with dan. Dan thank you. The United States by virtue of its technological prowess, by virtue of its openness has been a beacon to people coming to study. And that brings with it a great deal of good for the United States. There is no doubt when people come to the u. S. And study here for a significant period of time, they get something to know about our society, our culture and hopefully that translates into a positive sense of the u. S. And its peoples. That bodes well particularly when those individuals go back to their own countries, and leaders and political influence makers. By the same token, because of the size of the nonimmigrant population in the United States at any one time, it poses unique questions and problems of control. Foreign students are nonimmigrants, temporary visitors, but unlike other temporary nonimmigrants who may be admitted for 90 days or six months, a point of fact, when a foreign student or Research Scholar is admitted to the United States, they are admitted for the duration of their status, which is to say for a period of years until their studies conclude, which might be at the undergraduate or at the graduate and postgraduate levels. What that translates to is that an individual may be here for anywhere from six to eight years, and be operating for u. S. Society, the most open of environments, which is to say institutions of higher learning. This can be a good thing, but the reality for Government Security officers is, it creates a sea in which fishes can swim. Although mao was speaking about guerillas among people, it is true in the scholar populations, by virtue of their size and diversity and openness of the campus environments act as a Perfect Place in which people who are engaged in espionage or people who are of malcontent can conceal themselves without any real serious possibility that they will be detected, at least not until in time. There are too many people for government officers and intelligence agents and counterintelligence agents and Law Enforcement to keep up with. That basically is the sum and substance of the problem. At least one dimension of the problem. The other dimension is that over the course of the past few decades, because of the cost of higher education, particularly for people paying at the highest levels, which International Students are, it becomes very lucrative for universities fill their campuses with people whose governments are often paying the cost of their tuition and the cost of them living in the United States for that period of time. The consequence of that is it has the de facto effect of over the course of time squeezing nativeborn citizens out of a lot of positions, and this is particularly of concern where stem, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, subjects are concerned, it is leading to an atrophying of u. S. Born graduates in those studies, and the consequence is for industry and government and the Defense Department, the energy department, there is a dearth of people they can bring on in a position to pass Government Security checks because those are not going to be available to foreigners. And this has caused a great deal of concern over the course of some number of years. Touching on the concerns about espionage, it is significant that every fbi director going back several decades when they speak about National Security concerns has addressed the unique problems they confront with the foreign student population, and that is because they acknowledge that functionally it is beyond their capacity to monitor and control the number of people who come into the United States to study every year. And by way of example, every year from 2013 to 2017 there were more than 2 million admissions per year of nonimmigrant students and exchange scholars. It is important for me to point out that an admission is not the same as a human being because obviously a human being could leave temporarily, say on vacation or to go visit family, and then come back. Even if you were to assume each individual departed and came back at least once, that still means at any point in time a population of foreign students and scholars in the United States exceeding one million, and that is on the low side. It is without doubt a problem for u. S. Security and counterintelligence officers to keep track, and it is not just the number, but the diversity of the places that these individuals come from because surprisingly many of them come from places that are either actively hostile to the United States, or are in fierce global competition with the United States for predominance, whether that is militarily or in trade or technology. By way of example, the International Institute for education says during the 20172018 academic year, there were 363,341 Chinese Students enrolled, and that is just students, not the exchange scholars. And that probably did not include vocational students who may be attending things like pilot school or maritime schools of various kinds. There were almost 13,000 iranian students here, 7. 5 thousand pakistani students, 5. 5 thousand russian students, 44,000 plus Saudi Arabian students, more than 10,000 turkish students, 726 syrian students. Those are just touching the surface. In addition, you have students from afghanistan, from cuba, from north korea, and an interesting thing when you look at the department of Homeland Security statistical yearbook, when you look for the numbers, some are categorized as d, and when you look at d, that means data is held to limit disclosure. Why would the department of Homeland Security exhibit an interest in withholding information about north koreans studying in the United States . I find that curious to the extreme and disturbing. You have more than 18,000 venezuelan students here, and a probably a good number of those are post maduro regime. A good number will also be advocates of the maduro regime. One constant about governments that are particularly authoritarian or focused on what they want is that they find in their own interests to seed the foreign student population with people who are sympathetic with their aims. A good example, not the only example is china because china is very focused on where it wants to go, what it wants to achieve, where it wants to be with its global dominance. And for the chinese government, espionage is, you might say, a family affair. Everything is geared toward accruing technological advantage, and if that means they can shortcircuit the time and money on research by stealing secrets, whether that is in the defense and military sector, or in the trade secret sector, they are going to do it. Not all of the people who come here by any means of course engage in espionage, but some do, and not all of them are government intelligence officers. Some of them are spies of opportunity. They are inculcated into the idea that it is patriotic for them if given the chance to take advantage of things that are open to them. And they are encouraged when the opportunity arises to fit themselves into niches where they will have the opportunity to see those secrets that they can pass back home. And if even only one in 10 or one in a hundred people are doing this, when you have hundreds of thousands of people studying, inevitably you will accrue very large benefits from that. And while i have talked about china, even more aggressive in that regard is iran, and iran would less likely be spies of opportunity. Iran is going to be salting its foreign student population after it has thoroughly vetted them to make sure their beliefs and interests coincide with that of the theocracy of the islamic republic. That is where i think the difficulty lies. It is compounded by the fact that in recent years in truth the department of Homeland Security and its predecessor, the immigration and Naturalization Service walked away from any meaningful enforcement and control of the student population, or of the University Systems that host these individuals. In theory, the federal government holds in its hand the ability to withhold or withdraw from an institution of learning the right to host foreign students. In practice that almost never happens, and david will speak to that very effectively. The point is unless and until something is done, this unfettered situation we find ourselves in will remain. That is untenable. Mark thank you. Now we will move to david north who will talk about a different aspect of it, the Optional Practical Training Program which is basically the nations largest Foreign Worker program. It pretends to be a student program. David. David welcome to the press club. I have a statement to make, a preliminary statement. I too was once a foreign student. I went to new zealand. I was a fulbright student in new zealand at the university in wilmington. I came there on a nine month visa and got an extension of two months and then came home. I am a model foreign student, not all of them do that. I also want to make a footnote to what dan said about north korea. D does not stand for david. It is part of an ancient back in your days of ins a practice of the government that there is one or two people in a grouping, it does not say one or two, it says d. There are not many folks from north korea here, and it is one of these puzzling things you see, and if you look very carefully at department of Homeland Security documents. I want to talk about the economics of all of this. I want to talk about the optional practical training none of those is things. It is a program, all right. Question. Ask you a suppose there was a federal Program Never authorized by congress as such that did the following. Yearok about 3 billion a away from americas elderly end in firm, gave that money to american corporations including such ultraprosperous ones such as amazon, which is new money, and j. P. Morgan, old money. That program, suppose there was a program that involved more than a third of the million workers. Program took money from the aging and the sick and given to u. S. Employers who had decided to hire a Foreign College graduate from an american university, rather than an american student. Suppose there was such a program. Wouldnt there be an outcry . There is a program and there is no outcry. One reason there is no outcry is because the press routinely opt program and never mentions the subsidy. The subsidy is the fact that neither the employer this is studentt nor the opt is charged for the usual payroll taxes. Medicare, Medicare Trust fund. Security the Social Security trust fund, and the federal Unemployment Insurance trust fund. All of that adds up to 8. 25 of payroll. That is a subsidy, the employer gets the subsidy. The former student gets a subsidy. That is what this program is. It involves a third of a million people, everyone of whom is a college grad. Everyone who is taking a job not normal, butthe taking a subsidized job. I find that appalling, and it is a great big secret. As we will show you, a series of and scholarly armnizations, and even an of the government itself does not talk about it. We saw recently long articles in the new york times, the wall street journal, the San Francisco examiner, and also an , long studies, articles about the opt program and never mention the subsidy. I think that is a disgrace. I am here to say they should mention it, and we will. That is what we are talking about today. The employer is faced or can be in a hypothetical situation somebody from argentina and the United States. And they both have the same degree. Available foroth 55,000 a year, whatever. And there is no difference. They are both bright and attractive folks. The argentinian comes at a comesnt, the argentinian at an 8. 5 discount. This is in stem. Something like 18,000 the employer gets if he hires the argentinian rather than the american. I think in many cases this is something the corporations are aware of. Most of them are aware of it and take advantage of it. It is not an even playing field. The american is saying, you have to pay me 100 . The argentinian or other alien is saying you have to pay me 92 . What do you suppose a rational employer does . In many cases, a third of a million cases, they hire the foreign grad. It is not a student, it is an alumnus now. The mechanism for this, and the program opt was created during the Bush Ii Administration and expanded by the obama administration, and preserved so far by the trump administration. But the mechanism is this. The bush people could not figure out how to make those alumni available to work in the United States as foreign alumni. They could not do that with alumni, so they cast a magic spell over this large population, and said, thou art still a student. And so during the first year all these grads have one year of subsidized appointment, and if you happen to be there are many foreign students have specialized in the stem field, you get three years. That is the opt program, and that is the problem with it. It takes billions of dollars away from the trust funds which are running down and need all the help they can get. And simultaneously they deny about a third of a million americans a job. Many of those third of a million scramble and find something else. My point is, you should not take money from american elderly and give it to fact cap operations corporations so they can discriminate against americans. I do not think that is a very good idea. That is all. I was a foreign student in the soviet union for two years and decided not to stay. Jessica i was a foreign student too sponsored by the german government. Good morning and thanks for being here. We heard from dan about the National Security risks that are program in a very open admitting foreign students in large numbers, and we heard from david about the pipeline of additional workers that is opened up by the existence of these foreign students together with the opt program. What i want to focus on this morning is the fact that the Student Visa Program has the highest rate of overstaying visaugh the of other programs. Those who come here on student visas are more likely not to go home, or more likely to violate the terms of their visa and stay on illegally. This is considered into our illegal immigration problem. Many, andk about how why, and give you recommendations at the conclusion. And we talk about Students Exchange overstays, this refers to people who come on an f visa, a basic student visa which can be for college or graduate school, but also can be for high public elementary or secondary education. Any school. We also have what is known as the m visa, which is for vocational institutes, including things like flight schools but also beauty schools and acting schools and dog grooming schools and the like. Program, or set of programs that many are not aware of which is the j visas for Exchange Visitors, most of whom are working in the country, some of whom are engaging in academic exchanges such as the fulbright program, but the vast majority of whom, more than 300,000 people coming in each year are working. Oh pairs, camp counselors au pairs, camp counselors, doctors, all sorts of occupations people are working in under the guise of an Exchange Program. The department of Homeland Security several years ago began publishing the data that is entryand thatan has been developed, and we know many are not leaving at the expiration of their bases, and in 2018 it was about 670,000 people did not depart at the time their visa expired. This is an enormous number of thele not complying with terms of their visas. 69,000 people entered on student or Exchange Visas in 2018 did not depart at the conclusion of their visas. Those numbers are reduced over after this a year period covered by the department of Homeland Security report, a significant number had either left the overstay population were adjusted to another status. If you referred to the handouts, the second page of the handout from a reportken i did on the dhs overstay report, and you can see the numbers in various categories. Overstay 20152018. Those numbers decline as i mentioned, but we do not know why some of those drop off the expected overstay list, whether they left on their own, adjusted status, or transitioned into orional Tactical Training some other status, or applied for an immigrant visa. Student andagain Exchange Visitors are the least compliant of all of our temporary visa admissions. , maybe your first page, they are out of order, there is a table that shows the worst countries with the worst numbers of people staying over, rates of being compliant. Some countries like china, india, saudi arabia, brazil, and south korea have on paper better it hasf compliance, but we admit so many students from those countries, even a small percentage that overstayed translates into a large number of the cell via leaders. China leads the list in 2018, almost 13,000 people overstayed their visa that year in the student and exchange category. Other countries are a problem because of the extremely or compliance rate, and we do not issue a letter pieces to these countries, but it is a problem because eritrea, where more than half who got a Student Exchange visa do not go home. , but you have to ask yourself why are we issuing so many pieces were more than half are not going to comply. Some of these countries are countries of concern because of National Security considerations, the fact they do not have robust identification programs, and some of these are travel ban countries on this list. Those are the reasons that this is important. The list of that countries with the highest overstay numbers, five countries represent 44 of all these overstayers. E have a double problem the other thing, some of these countries on this list are known as recalcitrant countries who do not accept their citizens back for deportation if we were to actually locate and arrest and try to remove them. We are stymied by these countries because they do not accept them back. These are questions why we issue visas in such large numbers to many of these countries. I also noticed by looking at the trends in the overstay report, we have three good years of data on Exchange Visitors, sometimes you can see when a number of has been visas reduced, the overstay rates are still high. It helps to reduce the number of thvisas, but there is a bad bet for a visa because they are high rates, and we need to think about something other than issuing fewer visas, if we are going to get a hold of the overstay problem. That would be stronger enforcement of the laws we have against overstaying. Chart thatared a dans list from his report of countries of concern who are getting large numbers of student visas, with the overstay rates, and again we see large numbers from countries of concern for espionage like china and iran, and countries of National Security concerns like saudi arabia. But also quite a few countries with doubledigit noncompliance iraq,like afghanistan, somalia, sudan, and so on. Students in particular a concern for us . Because the numbers are small relative to other visa categories like regular temporary visa holders. These are not the highest numbers, student visa overstays represent about 5 of the entire overstay population. Dan mentioned heart of the reason is because they are admitted for a long period of time with relatively little supervision. The other reason this is important is because coming on a student visa is a good pretext for a young person to gain. Dmission to the United States because of our visa laws, most of the young people getting student visas, would not qualify for a temporary visa on their own. Because of the fact they are young, maybe not in stable employment, considered high risk for overstaying. A communityget college or Vocational School or themnge program to accept as participants, or enroll them as students, it is not that difficult to get a student visa. Of course there is the known associations with terror, a number of the 9 11 terrorist were foreign students, and others known to be in association with espionage. But also because of this, the fact it is a good way for someone who would not otherwise qualify to get into the country, there are numerous fraud schemes that have risen in connection. Ith student and Exchange Visas david has documented well the nonrigorousof programs that exist in the country that admit people, which thatasically diploma mills are given the authorization by the department of Homeland Security to accept foreign students. There was recently a staying in thatit with a bogus school hsi had set up, and there were hundreds of foreign students who participated in that. There are problems in particular with chinese nationals facilitating, who develop which are very complex and involved getting imposters to take entrance exams in china, false passports issued to facilitate the entry of people who would not qualify for a student visa otherwise. Hundreds of thousands david has estimated in his report there may be as many as 40,000 individuals who have gotten into the United States who were fraudulent on a bogus visa student program, and then have access to the Optional Practical Training Program and disappear into the woodwork. This contributes to illegal immigration, and our government has developed a way to track which students do not maintain status in their university, which may not have rigorous academic programs. We do know a lot of this goes on, and yet ice devotes very little of its resources to enforcing the law against programs like this. There he explicitly, ice has its overstay enforcement is limited to those students considered to be a National Security or Public Safety threat. Everyone else is pretty much ignored. Request thead a last five years of ices deportation records, in which a bit of information i asked for was the immigration status of individuals being deported. What i found was in 2018 for example, ice removed 170 individuals whose status was student or exchange visitor, which is a tiny number out of a Huge Population of a million foreign students. 0. 4 culated, it is about of student visitors who overstay that face any threat of enforcement. That is miniscule. I would argue that such a low rate of removals is not just a deterrent, but that is an actual incentive for people to try to gain admission as a foreign student to get here, because they know there is little chance of enforcement. I put some charts in your packet that talk about who is ice going after. Years, 414 three individuals identified as students who were removed from the United States. The largest number from saudi arabia, china, kenya, india, jordan and a smattering of other countries. This enforcement is not happening in the ice the old offices that are traditionally known for the highest numbers of deportations like california and texas. Most of them interestingly were from the seattle field office, also a lot in detroit, chicago, miami. I believe this is because of ices hyperfocus on National Security and Public Safety. I was able to see in the data the reasons, the program of arrests. In other words, what type of removal cases these individuals were, and about half of them apparently came from referrals from a program that is our tracking system of foreign students. Only a fifth of them were criminals, four were from joint force tasks arrests, and a lot from border inspections. Some may say there were only four who were terrorist threats, i look at that and say, yikes. This level of enforcement is not helping us maintain the integrity of our immigration system, and it is creating a large haystack for counterterrorism officials. To address this, ice needs to take a much broader approach to enforcing overstays and noncompliance with visas, beyond National Security and Public Safety concerns. We gather all this information on the number and who has overstayed. They need to use it for more routine compliance. You want to focus on the fraud schemes and National Security threats, but there is room in ices resources to go beyond that and start calling people in to talk who have not overstayed. And Congress Needs to help also by giving the government more sanctionsse such as for the schools and employers and Exchange Program sponsors that are offering participation to these individuals. I will leave it at that, i have a page of recommendations in your packet. But this needs to happen. The way ice does overstay enforcement, it ignores most people and goes after a small only would it catch people who were just routine overstayers, but we know from experience, the also end up catching a lot of people who are a threat that you just didnt know about. It is critically important Going Forward to our immigration system. Thanks. Thank you. I had a couple of questions. I will go first. Everybody, is there really an argument for just not admitting foreign students from say china or iran altogether . You know, i read in the media, i dont know personally, but i read in the media that it was put forward at one point in far. But it didnt go very i think it would be an impossible political cell. Senator tom cotton put forward a bill that is going no race that basically said, anyone who in ao connection with that connection with the Peoples Liberation army of china would be locked from a visa. That is a great start. But i would argue that you will. Anyone that you will not always know who has a connection with the pla, but there has to be a connection between the two, where you are oniting those with the pla one hand and blocking the others. ,ometimes the way to get at it you dont always just focus on someone after they have been revealed to be involved in terror, if you have a decent compliance program, you start putting the fear of god into people who might be otherwise occasional opportunists or thinking about engaging in theft of intellectual property or secrets, or whatever. And if the United States government is the one giving these schools the right to bring foreign students into the , put the hammer down and say, we are going to withdraw your right to bring in foreign students because you havent exercised it properly. If it is done, it is a powerful weapon, and there will be political or precautions. Imagine doing that with a prestigious university. Then the is not done, status quo remains. Essentially suspending your drivers license. [laughter] method we take with workplace enforcement, you make it it works this violation. Or like a school that is not keeping track of students, or schools whose Business Model is just to issue i20s, so people can come as foreign students. Maybe we find some, but i think we need to look at removing or revoking their authority to issue i20s or shutting down their authority to operate on Exchange Program. My other question is for david. Because of the price of a training program, i dont know if the numbers are right, but i think it is the largest Foreign Worker program we have. Are there any Labor Department assessments of prevailing wages, any of that sort of thing, that we have and the other Foreign Worker programs as nominal and ineffective as that might be, the opt program doesnt have any of that, does it . No, it does not. It also has an advantage over some of the other Foreign Worker programs. Alumni, they can move around the labor market without worrying about losing this user. 1b worker,an h typically college graduates, you are tied to your employer. Maybe if you handle your paperwork correctly, you can move from one employer to another, but it is awkward. The employer can always say, hey, if you dont behave, i am not going to renew your visa and you will have to go back to writing came from. There is no such power in the opt program. As far as the numbers are concerned, in one sense, the opt program is probably the largest in terms of newcomers in a given year. H1b program is larger in terms of people who have status in the country. Is good for a longer amount of years. And it can be extended. So i hope that answers your question. Thank you. Any questions . We for the microphone. Couple of dozen here,. I am peggy, Congressional Correspondent for the hispanic outlook, and i have written a lot about foreign students as an impeachment to latinos, an impediment to latinos especially going into the s. T. E. M. Field. Does well, ion is will tell you about it later. A couple of question about opts, what these are do they have . Is it a special visa, and is it marked . Do the employers know they are an old pt . Op i am also wonderingt. If you guys have studied how many dreamers in daca came in as foreign students especially in the elementary schools. I have interviewed d. R. E. A. M. E. R. S. Who came in as foreign students. It is an incredible incentive to overstay their visa and apply for d. R. E. A. M. E. R. S. Status. I see more of this. And of course, they lie. How do you answer the question that this is the best and the brightest in the world, where i ,hink there is some argument especially china students, that they are the richest, but maybe not the best and brightest. Many of them couldnt even get into the schools in their own countries. Let me answer to w questions if i may. The overlap between daca and deferred admission for childhood action, deferred action for childhood arrivals action, it is a program that deals with from maximo and to some mexico, and to some extent, central america. Frompt people are many china, india and other countries. There isnt much overlap between the two programs. Daca has a most 30 of asian descent. I i cant respond to that, know the majority is from mexico. So we are dealing with two different formulations that overlap to some extent. Are eitherpt typically or always have visas to answer the question. Is that an extension of that . It is an extension of the stay. It is the extension of the stay that they secure for one or three years. One or three years . Yes. And for purposes of the employer, they have a Work Authorization document or work permit. That is what they. Present, and authority to work. They are authorized to work. [inaudible] know. They i talked to a guy who had been trainee and then alumni, and then got to be an h1b. And he said, my wages drop. Because he was certainly the payroll taxes. , you do butprogram in the program, you dont. On the issue raised of people coming to attend public high schools are public middle and elementary schools, i dont know the numbers on that, but i do think now that the government is collecting data on who is overstrained, where they came from or what category of visa, they should be it would to do some empirical analysis on any schools in particular that may be a problem. There is an opportunity for us to step back and say, why are we admitting people to attend public high schools here . Is the number one Vocational School listed by i. C. E. Accepting foreign students called Something Like the vessel institute for healing spirituality . [laughter] and why are we giving our student visas for people to attend Community Colleges and vocational programs . It is one thing if the education does not exist in their home country, you could make a case for it, but i dont think that evaluation has been done on our programs, and it needs to be rethought. That is part of the point. Nobody has really given much thought to the Foreign Student Program at all. By thesort of been run stakeholders, in effect, and it just goes on autopilot. One more question. Go ahead. I have tried to get some investigator grants and i just dont know why they are not interested. They are the most untouchable of all immigrants. The one argument that kind of gets the liberals, if you want to save it, the unlimited number of foreign students does keep tuition high. It enables tuition to remain high which is more and more a threat to middleclass American Students. That is the one argument where they might see it is a threat. And it has to crowd out some American Students. There is not an infinite number of youths in any university, there is literally no way it could not crowd of people. Anyway, that is kind of the point there are benefits to it, but there are also costs. Everybody thinks it is always a good and there is no downside, but that is not true. My strong belief, in this is based on my exposure to an involvement with the Student Exchange Visitor Program not that long ago, but after i left government myself and was working as a contractor or beltway bandit, is that the scvp has been collected by academia. They act as an outreach. Into i. C. E. Rather than as an arm of i. C. E. Into academia. And the problem is at least two people like us, very, very evident by the numbers of diploma mills, by the number of ofrstays, by crowding out nativeborn people seeking to gain s. T. E. M. Degrees. Ae are there, and you have seemingly fbi directors speaking out about it, report after report coming out of the Defense Department and other places speaking to the multiple issues and concerns espionage to terror, to just atrophy of our to create and maintain a pool of s. T. E. M. Graduates, it would be like giving away all of your corn every year and then your seed corn, then you turn to the country that has taken it all, because you have to start using their corn product because you give it all away. That is what we are doing with. S. T. E. M. We are giving other countries our intellectual capacity by withering away beer ability to bring people into these by withering away our ability to bring people into these science technology, engineering and mathematics programs. And to repeat for people, scvp is the arm within i. C. E. That regulates the forested and program and yet essentially what they call this regulatory capture, the people being regulated by the Government Agency are the ones actually running the companies that regulate them. Started after 9 11 to keep track of foreign students who who might be a threat. I have a question. People come to america and we have an experience in the United States that will make them better predisposed to understand us. But doesnt the reverse happen . Take someone like one of the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood in egypt. He spent time in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s was seated with hatred may be partly as a result of his visit here. Khalid sheikh mohammed. He had i a degree from a school in north carolina. There is some evidence that at some point, maybe a quarter or a third or half of the people held in guantanamo had been foreign students in the United States. That is how we were able to identify them as risks and put them there. Maybe these be did something at american universitys that American Students might not do as much, they actually listened to their professors. Universities, lets put it this way, there is not a place you would learn positive aspects of American Society or culture, you might get the harsh critics of American Society, and these students might be internalizing that. Maybe the Foreign Student Program is not a very good idea if we want to put in like us, because we are putting them in a place where a very large fraction of people who run it dont like the United States so much. And frankly, this was the case before the current takeover of america hatred in the universities. The Muslim Brotherhood leader was here in the 1940s. He went through an evocative scene where he wrote about a barn dance in greeley, colorado. A barn dance in the 40s in colorado, and he was repulsed by the licentious, promiscuous nature of a barn, a church barn dance in greeley, colorado. So even before the antiamericanism that is basically prevalent in universities happened, and had that effect to some degree. I was a foreign student in the armenia,ion, i was in but there were none armenia students from the third world, and they all looked around after a couple of days and said, my god, socialism is a disaster. Mess. Ountry is a total in a sense, maybe we should be paying for students to study in enemy countries of hours as a way of promoting proamericanism. That. Body has thoughts on jessica our Exchange Programs, many of them are not really Exchange Programs in the sense that a lot of americans go abroad to work as lifeguards, au pairs or teachers. They are moneymaking operations for these organizations that have names like promoting world peace and stuff like that. Go ahead. I was going to say, you are touching on culture shock. Weather where you are coming from is so fundamentally different than when you get here, you cant help but be repulsed because everything you have been brought up to believe is violated by the way we live. It takes a real breakthrough for someone not to ultimately become , as has by that, or happened with some terrorist, if you fall into it and become licentious, after a while you begin to hate yourself and react even more. Just as some smokers become hell on wheels with people who still smoke. But how can you predict that in advance . I am not sure you can just shut the door on everyone from saudi or frankly even qatar, just because there is a strong strong dust some strong wahab tradition there. That teeters on the edge of what people might find acceptable, but i think it is a question. Can you add up to what you will see there . And if you dont, you will become a danger to us. I think i have heard all four of you say immigration is good, massive immigration comes with a lot of negatives. How does that apply to forested and programs . Optuse we always have the coming in and competing, the numbers are very big, but also on campus, you have some who dont assimilate. Said he wasne who in an engineering class and the Chinese Student asked a question in chinese and the chinese professor answered back in chinese. I know a Chinese Student whose english was quite good, and by the time he graduated university, his english was not very good, because the numbers are so big, they arent even learning about our culture, or making friends in the american community. We are talking about decreasing the numbers. How low do you need to go . Mark i think part of that issue is not an overall number, in other words, how many forested as are in the country, but what percentage of any how many foreign students are in the country, but rather, should there be a cap over all on the numbers . Right now it is unlimited. And, should there be a cap on what share of the students that particular university admits i20 forms and allowed to bring students. I think nyu has the largest percentage of foreign students, i think it is over a quarter. They have the largest number. Mark there are actually smaller schools, david has written about these flybynight schools that are visa mills where almost everybody is a foreign student. That is just a way of getting a visa or getting a work permit, and nothing really to do with education or familiarizing themselves with the United States. We need to wrap up. I think all lower speakers here are happy to be accosted afterwards, if you are so inclined. The reports everybody has talked about are on our website at cis. Org. Hope to see you at our next event. Thank you. [applause] announcer coming up, a discussion on tensions between the u. S. And iran. That is at 11 00 a. M. Eastern. At 2 00 p. M. , President Trump is in louisville, kentucky four remarks at a convention. On cspan2, the retired rear admiral mark busby calls an event. Fromhat 9 00 a. M. , we hear the department of Homeland Security on Drug Technology and u. S. Cyber security. Acting Army Secretary Ryan Mccarthy talked about the armys readiness and modernization efforts