Why NAFSA is Supporting a Limited Exemption to Immigrant Intent: A Message from NAFSA’s Vice President for Public Policy and Practice

March 10, 2006

Dear Colleagues:

In 2003, NAFSA released the Task Force Report, “In America’s Interest: Welcoming International Students.” The report discusses the barriers faced by international students to study in the United States, identifying the need for a comprehensive strategy to enhance the ability of international students to pursue educational opportunities here. One of the cornerstones of the comprehensive strategy is a proposal to amend immigration law by eliminating the unworkable “intending immigrant” test whereby all international students are required to prove a negative - that they do not intend to remain in the United States after completing their studies.

NAFSA has been promoting and fully supporting proposals that would eliminate the immigrant intent and denial of visas due to 214(b) for all international students. The current political landscape has now changed with bills in Congress including exemptions for PhDs in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics, so-called STEM disciplines. These proposals, though limited in application, are a big step forward. For the last few years, it was a non-starter to discuss the possibility of changing the definition of international student to allow them to have any intent to legally remain in the country after graduation, even as reality showed their remaining would provide a competitive advantage to both our schools and our economy. The assertions made by some in the State Department that the student visa would then become the visa of choice for illegal immigrants intending not to go to school, but to remain here illegally, won the argument before it even began in Congress.

We have been successful in moving the discussion to the point where exempting a segment of the foreign student population from the immigrant intent provisions is no longer absurd, but a possibility. In endorsing a limited exemption, we are more likely to be successful thereby creating the opportunity to build on this success to advocate for broadening the exemption to include more international students.

NAFSA did not lightly make the decision to endorse a more limited exemption. This move was anticipated and approved by the NAFSA Board of Directors in December 2005. There are no guarantees that a bill with this provision will successfully make its way through Congress this year, but NAFSA will be advocating for reasonable legislation that contains reform of the immigrant intent provision.

Lawrence H. Bell
Vice President for Public Policy & Practice
NAFSA: Association of International Educators