US orders new visa reviews for arriving students
Source: AP-Excite
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Homeland Security Department ordered border agents "effective immediately" to verify that every international student who arrives in the U.S. has a valid student visa, according to an internal memorandum obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The new procedure is the government's first security change directly related to the Boston bombings.
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 U.S. 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 in the airport did not have access to the information about it 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 U.S. in December and returned Jan. 20. But in early January, his student-visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed from the university.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130503/DA61VSCG2.html
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Last edited Fri May 3, 2013, 06:26 PM - Edit history (1)
OMG, can't believe boarder agents do not have access to the visa status in the SEVIS database!!
What the hell are they thinking about in Homeland Security? They certainly appear to be lacking in common sense.
