U.S. orders crackdown on student visas

Border agents must ensure documents are valid

WASHINGTON A Buffalo college has advised student-visa holders living in Canada to add two hours to their daily commute after the Homeland Security Department ordered border agents to verify that every international student who arrives in the United States has a valid student visa.

The new procedure, outlined in an internal memorandum obtained Friday by The Associated Press, is the government’s first security change directly related to the Boston bombings.

In an email sent to D’Youville College students, staff and faculty, international student office director Laryssa S. Petryshyn said the security change “is causing and will cause numerous delays for all inter- national students entering the United States.”

The order from a senior official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, David J. Murphy, was circulated Thursday and came one day after the Obama administration acknowledged that a student from Kazakhstan accused of hiding evidence for one of the Boston bombing suspects was allowed to return to the United States in January without a valid student visa.

The student visa for Azamat Tazhayakov had been terminated when he arrived in New York on Jan. 20. But the border agent at the airport did not have access to the information in the Homeland Security Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, called SEVIS.

Tazhayakov was a friend and classmate of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Tazhayakov left the United States in December and returned Jan. 20. But in early January, his student-visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed from the university.

Tazhayakov and a second Kazakh student were arrested this week on federal charges of obstruction of justice. They were accused of helping to get rid of a backpack containing fireworks linked to Tsarnaev. A third student was also arrested and accused of lying to authorities.

Under existing procedures, border agents could verify a student’s status in SEVIS only when the person was referred to a second officer for additional inspection or questioning.

Under the new procedures, border agents will verify a student’s visa status before the person arrives in the United States using information provided on flight manifests. If that information is unavailable, border agents will check the visa status manually with the agency’s national targeting data centre.