After several false starts and software glitches, SEVIS, the national system to track foreign students in the United States, has gone online. As the Aug 1 deadline passed, there are isolated reports of long waits for the now-obligatory interviews and increasing difficulties for foreign students just beginning to arrive for the ’03-’04 academic year.
When the foreign visitors show up on campus, the school is required to update the SEVIS database to verify that they did indeed arrive. Any time a student changes his address, goes on medical leave, gets a part-time job, or drops a course, his database record will have to be updated.
”It’s hard to be confident it will work, because it hasn’t worked yet,” said Victor Johnson of the Association of International Educators.