- WASHINGTON - Lobbying
groups frequently claim that foreign students are a benefit to America's
balance of payments, comparable to a booming export sector. For instance,
the Institute for International Education (IIE) asserts that foreign students
contributed a net $14.5 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2006-07
school year by paying for tuition and living expenses with resources from
abroad, representing a net inflow of nearly $25,000 per year, every year,
from the average foreign student.
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- To assess these claims, the Center for Immigration Studies
has published a new Backgrounder, "Who Pays? Foreign Students Do Not
Help with Balance of Payments," written by immigration researcher
David North. Acknowledging other, non-financial reasons the United States
might benefit from admitting foreign students, North examines the most
recent IIE report on foreign students' monetary contributions and compares
it to two other studies on the subject. His report finds that the balance-of-payments
claim is totally without merit.
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- The complete report is available online at http://www.cis.org/articles/2008/back608.html
and includes the following findings:
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- * The IIE assumes that the only cost to the domestic
sources is tuition. However, partially hidden subsidies from U.S. sources,
such as endowments and taxpayer contributions to state schools, are not
taken into consideration.
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- * The IIE report relies on questionable data collection
techniques, using foreign student advisers as a primary source for determining
whether students' funding originated overseas or domestically. In the most
recent year, little more than half of the foreign student advisers surveyed
even responded to the survey's question on the origin of students' resources.
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- * While the IEE claims that two-thirds or more of foreign
students' funding comes from abroad i.e., money pumped into the U.S.
economy from abroad other, more rigorous studies that surveyed the
students themselves have produced very different results. In prior research,
the author found that only 10.4 percent of the foreign students' incomes
came from overseas, the rest coming from U.S. sources. A multi-agency survey
of doctoral students found that only 9.7 percent of foreign students' resources
came from overseas.
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- The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent
research institute
- which examines the impact of immigration on the United
States.
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- Contact Bryan Griffith press@cis.org, (202) 466-8185
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