FORT KENT – A national Web site coming online this summer is the first step in the government’s plan to track the movements of all students in the country with temporary visas.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System site replaces electronically the paper trail between institutions of higher education and the federal government designed to keep track of all non-U.S. citizens enrolled in degree programs.

Maine college officials say they do not expect the new system to have much of an impact on what they do.

“The process is not changing,” Melik Khoury, University of Maine at Fort Kent admissions director, said earlier this week. “The way we report it will, [and] the information will be on a national Web site, not just on campus.”

Last year UMFK enrolled 270 foreign students, the bulk from Canada with 12 from other countries.

The Web site is aimed at making sure foreign students take the courses they were approved to take and attend the schools they told the government they would attend.

Currently, foreign students enrolled at U.S. colleges or universities are issued an I-20 form by the host campus. The form includes the student’s campus, degree program, start date, anticipated completion date and tuition status.

“The new Web site will make it easier for the government to know which students are coming in under the I-20 forms,” Elizabeth Ramirez, Husson College director of academic affairs, said this week. “I don’t see it having a great impact on what we do, at present.”

Husson enrolled just under 100 foreign students last year, she said.

“It’s going to mean more record keeping for institutions of higher learning,” Karen Boucias, director of the Office of International Projects and coordinator of the National Student Exchange at the University of Maine, said Wednesdsay. “Right now we are in a wait-and-see mode and reading new memos about this every day. As it is, we keep good records, anyway.”

There were 425 foreign students enrolled at the university last year.

Boucias is concerned any fees associated with the new system might be passed on to incoming foreign students, creating some financial hardship.

“As a country we should be concerned,” she said. “The United States is a place where foreign students like to study and they bring so much to a campus.”

The Web site will give INS rapid access to, and better control over information concerning the whereabouts of foreign students, according to Dawn Alley, INS program analyst in Portland.

“We just want to get some better control over who is here,” she said. “A lot of that control had been handed over to the colleges.”

For example, Alley said, it has not been unusual for foreign students to “shop around” for colleges and receive I-20 forms from several institutions.

“These individuals could then turn around and sell these extra forms to other individuals not here as students.”

Universities and colleges will now register the student and the I-20 with SEVIS. “Anyone not in the system [as a registered student] will have their I-20 immediately revoked,” Alley said.

The plan, she said, was discussed as early as 1999, but events surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks sped up the site’s implementation.

SEVIS also will close some of the loopholes that have led to the government losing track of some foreign students. In past years thousands of foreign students accepted to more than one American college switched colleges once they arrived. Others have simply disappeared while in the United States.

Schools will have to report through the Web site whether foreign students are making any shifts in their field of study. Students beginning to take courses in subjects that might provide useful information to terrorists – such as chemistry or nuclear physics – could trigger an inquiry from the INS.

All of this, said ScottVoisine, UMFK’s director of student services, is information already compiled by the schools.

“Right now, if a student changes their course of study, we must issue them a new I-20,” he said. “By registering that information with SEVIS, it will reduce the lag time before that information gets to the government.”

All three campus officials said that while there have been isolated instances of foreign students dropping out and leaving or never arriving on campus, all were tracked down eventually and without incident.

None of the administrators fears SEVIS is a tool for racial profiling.

“This is just a sign of the times,” Boucias said. “We are all learning to do things in a new way.”

A native of Gambia and UMFK alumnus, Khoury said he is aware of the responsibilities that come with being a foreign student and with the impact the newcomers have.

“When I came to this country I expected to be treated differently,” he said. “But educating foreign students is a billion-dollar industry in terms of the numbers of students who come here to get educated, [and] that revenue could be lost.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.