Meanwhile, Trouble at Home

Lack of data hampers deporting of illegal Iranian students

When the embassy was seized in Tehran, the Carter Administration looked for some means of retaliating and finally, as a first step, ordered the deportation of Iranian students who are in the U.S. illegally. As one Justice Department official said at the time, "It's the only bullets--or BBs--we had." Yet even this restrained action may fall short of any target. A lack of accurate data on the students, growing resistance from civil libertarian groups and a variety of court challenges are likely to slow down deportation. So far, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has questioned 17,700 Iranian students and found 2,200 "out-of-status" and thus subject to deportation.

But at week's end only 285 of these had agreed to go back to Iran without fighting the proceedings.

Most Iranian students arrive in the U.S. legally. The process is simple enough.

They obtain an I-20 form from a college certifying that they can speak or will learn English, that they have adequate academic credentials and that they can pay their way. With the I-20, they are able to get a student visa. They can then complete their education in the U.S. provided they remain enrolled full time. But many become illegal by dropping out, taking a job or staying on after graduation.

They are aided by the fact that although the U.S. maintains strict numerical limitations, there is no rigorous monitoring of foreigners once they get into the country. The U.S. resembles a sieve--the easiest country in the world to get into or out of without permission. "Our society is not that interested in keeping tabs on "people," says an INS official in Boston. "We operate on an honor system." The Iranian students who want to beat the system obviously do not.

The INS has only a vague notion of how many Iranians, legal or illegal, are actually in the U.S. Last January, after the Iranian students became a highly visible minority by demonstrating against the Shah, U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell asked the INS for the exact number in the country. He was appalled to find that it was not available. To try to provide some kind of estimate, the INS got on the phone to colleges around the country and produced a figure of 50,000. Now the agency has combed through its files again and increased the estimate to 75,000, but even that may be too low.

The largest concentration of Iranian students is in the West and Southwest, where they often study engineering and petroleum-related subjects. The percentage of Iranians at some schools is surprisingly high. At Texas Southern University there are 900 Iranians out of a student body of 10,000. At the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, an enrollment of 28,000 includes 900 Iranians. Woodbury University in Los Angeles has 700 Iranians among 1,400 students.

The INS troubles with tracking the students emphasized once again that it keeps some of the sloppiest records in Washington. One of the last federal agencies to automate, the INS has a computer system that still has not caught up with its paper work. Many files are kept by hand, if they are kept at all. Most of the agency's 6,000 employees, including 900 investigators, have been trying to cope with the hordes of illegal aliens pouring across the 2,000-mile Mexican border. Says New York Immigration Lawyer Benjamin Gim: "The INS is chronically underfunded and undermanned. It is a poor stepchild of the Justice Department without any real constituency or political clout."

Until the recent drive began, the INS let the schools keep track of their Iranian students--a sieve within a sieve. Colleges were not disposed to badger foreign students who were, after all, supposed to return home with pleasant memories of America. "Control was designed to be loose," says Edward O'Connor, western regional director of INS. "We hoped that besides learning their academics, the foreign students would learn something about American democracy and freedom and take that back to their countries along with their education." Educators were also reluctant to crack down on Iranians who might face hardship or even death if they were sent home.

Some colleges' records are as carelessly maintained as those at the INS. Schools have often been lackadaisical about reporting students who fail their courses, transfer to another institution or drop out altogether.

Educational institutions, particularly private colleges and universities, also have a financial incentive to enroll foreign students. Iranian tuitions have been most helpful at a time when the student population is declining.

Schools eager for students have signed blank I-20 forms and given them to private recruiters, who go abroad and sometimes literally sell them to foreigners on the street. Iranians have been known to pay $1,500 to a recruiter to obtain an I-20. Windham College in Vermont tried unsuccessfully to stave off bankruptcy by enrolling as many foreign students as possible. (In 1978 it had 70 in an enrollment of 260.) Even fashionable Bennington College, also in Vermont, admitted to distributing signed blank I-20s in Iran.

Fly-by-night trade or language schools have used the Iranians as a handy source of cash. Says INS Deputy General Counsel Paul Schmidt: "The attitude taken by some schools is 'As long as the foreigner pays his tuition, so what if he drops out after three weeks?' " The INS is empowered to remove the accreditation from institutions that violate immigration regulations, but not once has it done so.

Nor has it ever brought a criminal prosecution against an offending college.

In the wake of Carter's deportation order, the INS has assigned more than half of its investigators to the Iranians.

Teams are now moving onto campuses to make sure that all Iranian students are registered by the Dec. 14 deadline.

Schools are responding with varying degrees of enthusiasm. In the Southwest, colleges have generally welcomed the INS.

But in California INS investigators have been banned from some campuses, among them Stanford, U.C.L.A. and U.S.C., although these schools have made appointments for Iranian students at local INS offices. Clark Coan, director of foreign student services at the University of Kansas, says that his office has made contact with most of the 269 Iranians on campus. But if some fail to show up to register, Coan adds, "we won't go out and hunt them down. That's an INS problem."

Iranians have shown every sign of fighting deportation. Their effort is helped by court decisions of recent years, which have made it harder for the Government to deport aliens, whatever their offense.

An Iranian threatened with deportation can appeal to an INS administrative judge.

If that fails, he can go before a federal court. A skillful attorney can drag out proceedings for years. Says David Carliner, a leading immigration lawyer: "The Bill of Rights applies to aliens--even illegal aliens--just as much as it does to U.S. citizens."

Three Iranian students last week filed a class-action suit in Federal District Court in Washington challenging the constitutionality of the Carter deportation program on the grounds that it discriminates against one nationality group. The suit, which asks for an injunction against the program, was supported by two leftist organizations: the Socialist Workers Party and the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. The American Civil Liberties Union is expected to bring a similar suit this week. Says the Rev.

Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame: "Iranian students in this country have the same rights as any others, and it seems a little picky to be looking at them now."

That viewpoint, however, overlooks the fact that Iran is quite savagely picking on the U.S. In an effort to save Americans taken hostage in clear violation of international law and precedent, the Administration surely has a right to demand that Iranian students in the U.S.

observe American laws and regulations.

Despite the outrages committed on Americans in Iran, Americans at home have largely managed to control their indignation. There have been only a few isolated attacks on Iranians. Two weeks ago, the Greenville Technical College in South Carolina voted to bar all 104 of its Iranian students from re-enrolling in the winter quarter. But after a warning from the state attorney general and other authorities, the college last week reinstated the students. Iranians will doubtless find a more permissive attitude in the U.S. when--and if--the American hostages are released unharmed from the embassy in Tehran.

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