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U.K. Begins Screening International Students
From Thursday, November 8, 2007 issue.
Some foreign graduate students entering the United Kingdom must now undergo security reviews as part of a program to ensure knowledge acquired in British universities is not used by other nations for development of weapons of mass destruction, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 29). Under the new program, students seeking visas to enter the United Kingdom from outside the European Economic Area or Switzerland must reveal information on their families and backgrounds in an online questionnaire that is reviewed by U.K. security agencies. The screening aims to stop students from using information gained in 41 sensitive areas such as microbiology and nuclear physics to create biological weapons agents, assemble a nuclear weapon or construct a radiological “dirty bomb,” said one British Foreign Office official. “There are certain countries (which) could conceivably use that kind of scientific information for the wrong reasons,” the official said without specifying which countries were most suspect. Some student advocates have criticized the program. “This new screening system treats international students with undue suspicion,” said Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students. “This is wrong.” The new security program is similar to a U.S. system for vetting non-U.S. graduate students. The U.S. program was expanded after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and currently covers students seeking to study fields such as nuclear technology or biotechnology engineering in the United States (Thomas Wagner, Associated Press/PR-inside.com, Nov. 7).
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