Efforts to Track Foreign Students Are Said to Lag By KATE ZERNIKE and CHRISTOPHER DREW Despite promises to tighten controls on student visas after Sept. 11, the government is at least a year from making the system safer from terrorists, who used the visas while plotting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the September attacks, immigration officials say. A computer network to track foreign students in the country, originally ordered by Congress six years ago, is still being tested and will not be running fully until next year. Even then, immigration service officials said, there will not be enough enforcement agents to check on all of the visa violators flagged by the system. Moreover, colleges that see foreign students as a lucrative market are raising concerns about how the system will be paid for and operated, and their objections could delay it even further. Officials concede they do not know for sure where the 547,000 people holding student visas are attending school, or whether they actually are.

Labels: Economics