Tracking trouble.

• Position: Letters

We at the INS were amused to read that somehow I'm working to undermine the new student tracking system ("Borderline Insanity," May). That's because I read the article en route to a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget to speed the proposed regulation to implement the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS), the new student tracking system. We have been working around the clock to get SEVIS operational as soon as possible. Moreover, in recent weeks INS has put forward a series of sensible measures that significantly tighten the foreign student process.

Contrary to the premise of the article, since Commissioner Jim Ziglar and I came to INS, the student tracking system has proceeded at its fastest pace to date. The regulation on student tracking was published on May 16, and schools will start being enrolled in SEVIS this summer. These facts undermine the whole point of the article.

Confessore's contention that when I worked on the Senate Immigration Subcommittee I was heavily involved in preventing the student tracking system that eventually became SEVIS is ridiculous. In four years, I spent perhaps six to eight hours total on this issue and even that involved the narrow issue of who collected the fee on foreign students--the schools or the Justice Department--not whether there should be a system or even what the system should do.

The contention that SEVIS is not as good as another potential approach is a matter of conjecture. The article references the pilot program called CIPRIS that the INS ran for two school years (1997-1999). The CIPRIS pilot was just that--a pilot--an opportunity to test some concepts. In fact, the INS applied what was learned from the pilot to SEVIS.

I declined to be interviewed for the article because I suspected an agenda and that's precisely what I found. The article also attributed to me an alleged statement about "Gestapo tactics" that I never made. That quotation came from a secondary source and was never verified with our public affairs office.

STUART ANDERSON Executive Associate Commissioner, Policy and Planning, Immigration and Naturalization Service If it weren't so slanderous, I would have found Nicholas Confessore's article a fascinating throwback to the McCarthy era. The notion that NAFSA "sprang into action" in response to the 1996 law is laughable. Many of our members did have serious reservations about the student tracking system. Some, including one you quoted, "loved it."...