In January of 2008 the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee published its report. The recommendations listed below are of particular interest to NAFSA, which helped write 12 of the top priorities.
“The United States should articulate a comprehensive national policy for attracting international students and place a White House official in charge of coordinating implementation of the policy.
The responsibility for creating, conducting, and evaluating most public diplomacy programs should be removed from the Department of State and housed in a new quasi-governmental entity, the Corporation for Public Diplomacy.
The Department of State should expand its use of management practices related to visa processing to include more monitoring of outcomes and the achievement of specific results—including a maximum 30-day wait time for visa interviews and improvements in security and error reduction—with systematic goals, performance metrics, feedback, and improvements in outcomes from year to year.
The Department of Homeland Security should continue to improve security performance while reducing the average amount of time U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers spend with each traveler to less than pre-September 11 levels and staff ports of entry sufficiently to complete primary inspection of foreign passengers in less than 30 minutes by December of 2009.”