127
education degree level, and authorization for on-campus employment. As of March 2011, China had the largest number of students in SEVIS, at 158,698.°
The FBI has access to all of the student data contained in SEVIS, and no longer needs
the permission of DHS to initiate investigations of foreign students.*° However, the laws, regulations, and directives governing SEVIS do not require some additional critical pieces of information, which are nonetheless perceived to be important to manage the program. According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO):
e the nonimmigrant visa number, expiration date, and issuing post are optional and only captured if entered into the system by the school or exchange visitor program;
e the nonimmigrant driver’s license number and issuing state were imposed by the interagency working group and support investigative efforts; and
e the nonimmigrant passport number, passport expiration date, and passport issuing country are optional and only captured if entered into the system by the school or exchange visitor program.”’
It is difficult to ascertain from open sources whether these problems have been fixed, but the nonmandatory data are key investigative details that would be critical for federal law enforcement seeking to assess possible illicit technology transfers by students.
Improved export controls
The second major policy problem involves PRC student access to controled technology under the deemed export system. According to the Commerce Department, a restricted product or technology is “deemed,” or considered exported, when it is used by a foreign national in the United States.?* However, under these rules, a university or research lab does not need a deemed export license if a foreign graduate student is merely present in a lab. It only needs a license if it intends to export that technology to the foreign national’s country.
From 2004 to 2006, the US Commerce Department attempted to change these rules,” but was stymied by opposition from universities and research labs.*° Yet the continued flow of controlled technology to the PRC and the findings of GAO studies on the problems
of university oversight*' strongly suggest that Commerce’s recommendations should be reexamined.
In 2009, then president Obama “directed a broad-based interagency reform of the US export control system with the goal of strengthening national security and the competitiveness of key US manufacturing and technology sectors by focusing on current threats and adapting
Section 8
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020586