Chancellor’s statement regarding SEVIS funding

Beginning this year, UW–Madison, along with all other colleges and universities across the country, were compelled to enroll in SEVIS, managed through the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security. The system is a processing and record-keeping database that tracks changes in visa status for international students and visiting faculty and staff.

Throughout the development of the SEVIS program, UW–Madison has actively worked with federal officials and other academic representatives and associations in an effort to make SEVIS as workable as possible while still meeting federal requirements.

In April, the university announced plans to charge international students a $50 per semester fee ($25 for summer) to help cover the projected $330,000 cost of the system, which has been mandated by the federal government.

The following is a statement from Chancellor John D. Wiley related to campus discussion on the implementation of the fee described above.

Chancellor’s Statement

Numerous students, staff and faculty have registered their concern and/or opposition to using visa service fees to fund the added costs of implementing the federally mandated SEVIS system. I would like to provide some contextual background for this fee, and then tell you what we are proposing in response to the concerns expressed.

It has always been the case that those entering the U.S. on a student visa were expected to enroll as students, to remain enrolled for the duration of their stay and to apply for a visa change or return home at the conclusion of their studies. However, enforcement of these conditions was sporadic, at best, and was based largely on voluntary reporting by the visa holder.

Under recently enacted federal law, violations of these conditions now carry extremely serious consequences, most often and most likely resulting in deportation. The days are over when international students can be late in renewing a visa or ignore reporting an address change, or when dissertators can wait until the middle or the end of a semester to register. We are now required to submit official lists of registered students each semester, and to assist students in complying with all other visa-related requirements so they can remain here as students.

The cost of the added processing is expected to be more than $300,000 a year for UW–Madison. The question is from where can – and should – that money come? What is the most feasible and fairest source?

In past years, the state was sometimes willing and able to help us comply with unfunded federal mandates. That’s no longer true. Not only is there no money for additional administrative costs, but the state portion of our budget is being cut severely, and we are being told to cut disproportionately from “administration.” What about gift funds? We have no existing gift funds that could be used for this, and it would require a $6 million endowment to provide an ongoing $300,000 a year from distributed earnings. We could, in principle, request an increase in the nonallocable segregated fees that all students pay, and use that increment to pay for visa services. If we did so, it would be the first time we had asked all students to pay for a service that only a small fraction of the students are able or eligible to use. Furthermore, a change in the nonallocable segregated fees requires a lengthy process that could not be implemented by next fall.

Therefore, we decided that the fairest and most feasible solution was to charge a visa service fee to visa holders. Most of our Big Ten peers – as well as other institutions – have done the same, in some cases implementing higher fees because they have fewer international students.

With that as background, I am open to alternative methods of financing this cost. I have asked Dean Hong to work with ASM and the TAA to put together an advisory committee to research and think through the consequences of alternative methods. While I am extremely doubtful that we can implement any alternative by next fall, and am admittedly skeptical that a better alternative exists, I will await their advice.