Perhaps by now you have heard about the new “Student and Exchange Visitor Information System” that has recently been implemented at the UW. This system tracks the movement and academic progress of all international students for the Office of Homeland Security as mandated by the Patriot Act. Under this system, students can be immediately deported for such infractions as dropping credits during the semester, leaving the country without prior permission (even to attend the funeral of a loved one), or neglecting to inform the university of a change of address within 10 days.

There is no appeals process for this system: if your name pops up for any one of these issues, you can be deported or refused re-entry into the United States. This system for surveillance and deportation is mandated under the Patriot Act.

For months the International Student Services office has been conducting mandatory workshops for international students about SEVIS without even hinting that it had decided to impose a new fee on foreign students to pay for SEVIS. Then, on April Fool’s Day, the ISS sent an e-mail to international students, notifying them that starting next Fall they will have to pay up to $125 per year in “service fees” for the SEVIS system ($50/semester and $25/summer). Needless to say, international students were not laughing.

The implementation of the SEVIS monitoring system represents a two-sided attack on civil liberties and due process: the federal government is forcing a highly imperfect monitoring system with major consequences and no appeals process, while the university is pushing what is essentially a surveillance tax, implemented with absolutely no consultation with students as required by UW’s own regulations and by state law. Both of these set a dangerous precedent which affects our community as a whole, and could easily be extended beyond the international student population.

Let us be clear about one thing: SEVIS is not a service for international students. It is a burden and an invasion of their privacy. To claim (as university officials have repeatedly done) that the implementation of SEVIS provides some general good to international students is to indulge in a perverse type of inverse logic.

To use an analogy: also under the Patriot Act, the government can now demand anyone’s library records. If the government is interested in what enough UW students, faculty and staff are reading, this could pose a significant burden for UW library staff, who have to compile the records for the federal government. What if, using the same logic as the SEVIS fee, the university turned to those students, faculty and staff whose library records are being monitored and said that they had to pay a fee for the new library “service”? People would be understandably outraged. There is no difference between this — for now hypothetical — situation and the ignominious surveillance tax the university wants to levy upon international students.

It should be apparent to any clear-thinking individual that people who are monitored in this way not only do not benefit, but are rather compromised as the objects of surveillance. Claims by Chancellor John Wiley or Dean Luoluo Hong that SEVIS provides a service to international students because it helps them stay in this country put an absurdly silver lining on what is essentially a threat: “well, sure this is the system that can get you deported, but then again you could look at it as the system that might not get you deported if you don’t screw up,” which is a little like, “Sure this rope around your neck could hang you, but you could also look at it as the rope that could not hang you as long as you don’t slip off this chair.” … Gee, thanks.

If the university really wanted to offer international students a service to help keep them here and help them stay here, it would provide some legal defense for those students who, after switching majors, suddenly find themselves face-to-face with an immigration officer. It would not simply let our international students disappear one by one against a backdrop of official silence.

We at the UW have a unique opportunity to set a precedent. Other major universities are currently stalling on this issue, and it looks like what happens here could have major implications for the way international students are ultimately treated at other universities.

It is up to UW students, faculty and staff to speak out against surveillance taxes, and to demand university policies based on free and open debate, not veiled threats and administrative pronouncements.