The Bobcat Nation

Yet we accept 20 from Egypt in ONE YEAR with a war going on?

Digraceful. I will have to say that if this is terror related at all we can sleep a bit easier. Only an idiot would send 20 of his henchmen from Egypt to the middle of nowhere and think that no one would notice any of them missing.

http://www.montana.edu/wwwoie/apply.htm

Photos of our missing students.

I don't think it's any big deal, and hopefully I'm not wrong.

Updated: 1 hour, 6 minutes ago
MINNEAPOLIS - Three Egyptian students who were being sought for failing to turn up for an exchange program at Montana State University were taken into custody Wednesday, more than a week after they arrived in the United States.

One student was arrested in Minnesota, and two others surrendered to authorities in New Jersey. They were among 11 students being sought by law enforcement after they failed to attend a monthlong program on the English language and U.S. history and culture in Bozeman, Mont., the FBI said.

Eslam Ibrahim Mohamed El-Dessouki, 21, was taken into custody in Minneapolis on an immigration violation. Two other students — Mohamed Ragab Mohamed Abd Alla and Ebrahim Mabrouk Moustafa Abdou, both 22 — surrendered to police in Manville, N.J., after hearing media reports that they were wanted, FBI spokesman Steven Siegal said.

Eight students remain at large. They arrived in New York on July 29 as part of a group of 17 students. Six students reported to Bozeman on time.

The missing students pose no terrorism threat, the FBI said.

Hamvi Kassab, a Minneapolis grocer who said he is El-Dessouki’s uncle, told television station KSTP that his nephew was in town to visit relatives and to inquire about attending the University of Minnesota.

Montana State repeatedly tried to contact the missing students. When that failed, the school notified Homeland Security officials and registered the Egyptians as “no-shows” in the system developed after the Sept. 11 attacks to track foreign students.

The government tightened the student visa process after the attacks. One of the hijackers involved in the attacks had arrived in the U.S. with a student visa, and immigration officials approved student visas for two other hijackers after they entered the country. A fourth attended flight training school without a student visa.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

GOKATS wrote:I don't think it's any big deal, and hopefully I'm not wrong.

Yeah, Great press for MSU and the state of Montana especially when I saw this story on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams last night.

grizdoc wrote:

GOKATS wrote:I don't think it's any big deal, and hopefully I'm not wrong.

Yeah, Great press for MSU and the state of Montana especially when I saw this story on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams last night.

Why is that? The United States are the one's that allowed them into the country. How many times do I have to repeat, that MSU IS NOT A BABYSITTER to kids when they enroll in the University? These people are all adults and MSU has NO CONTROL on if they arrived from their plane or not. Do you think MSU has the power (and or resources) to babysit every student that enrolls in the university?

LAME

CARDIAC_CATS wrote:

grizdoc wrote:

GOKATS wrote:I don't think it's any big deal, and hopefully I'm not wrong.

Yeah, Great press for MSU and the state of Montana especially when I saw this story on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams last night.

Why is that? The United States are the one's that allowed them into the country. How many times do I have to repeat, that MSU IS NOT A BABYSITTER to kids when they enroll in the University? These people are all adults and MSU has NO CONTROL on if they arrived from their plane or not. Do you think MSU has the power (and or resources) to babysit every student that enrolls in the university?

LAME

Yeah I think I now have MSU to blame for the D+ I received in organic chemistry when I was a sophomore.

Shouldn't MSU recieve some praise for actually tracking this and making sure it was reported when they didn't show. I know it's what they are supposed to do but I would be willing to put money down that not every school is effectively doing this.

lifeloyalsigmsu wrote:

CARDIAC_CATS wrote:

grizdoc wrote:

GOKATS wrote:I don't think it's any big deal, and hopefully I'm not wrong.

Yeah, Great press for MSU and the state of Montana especially when I saw this story on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams last night.

Why is that? The United States are the one's that allowed them into the country. How many times do I have to repeat, that MSU IS NOT A BABYSITTER to kids when they enroll in the University? These people are all adults and MSU has NO CONTROL on if they arrived from their plane or not. Do you think MSU has the power (and or resources) to babysit every student that enrolls in the university?

LAME

Yeah I think I now have MSU to blame for the D+ I received in organic chemistry when I was a sophomore.

I personally blame Derby Days.

Of course, in all reality, it has no negative mark on MSU. But many people don't completely listen to the news, they hear tid bits, or jokes made.

Our radio DJ here is a UM alum, and he told me he had a very hard time reporting that story without throwing in a slam.

I could not care less about MSU accepting foreign students, but in light of the past five years, and in regards to the relatively small contingency of foreign students currently on campus, this mass registration should have set off alarm bells for somebody, somewhere. Of course, I am talking about the world of academia and not where I currently reside - REALITY.

CARDIAC_CATS wrote:
Why is that? The United States are the one's that allowed them into the country. How many times do I have to repeat, that MSU IS NOT A BABYSITTER to kids when they enroll in the University? These people are all adults and MSU has NO CONTROL on if they arrived from their plane or not. Do you think MSU has the power (and or resources) to babysit every student that enrolls in the university?

LAME

While I agree the University does need to babysit these individual/students/athletes they do need to make sure they need to do a better job of screening them.

9 of the 11 are now in custody. One thing I was just made aware of is that they enrolled for a summer course and never showed. 11 missing students from one country for a summer course.

Interesting...

PapaG wrote:9 of the 11 are now in custody. One thing I was just made aware of is that they enrolled for a summer course and never showed. 11 missing students from one country for a summer course.

Interesting...

Wasn't the course a part of a cultural exchange and coordinated through various Universities in other countries ... including one in Eqypt from which all of these students came? It seemed like it was quite appropriate that these students would be part of something like that.

I assume/hope that whatever Federal agency is now in charge of this sort of thing (Homeland Security?) reviewed each student and approved their visa. They are the gate for filtering students, as I understand it, not the individual schools. In fact, I doubt individual schools have even the beginnings of an infrastructure to do security checks or make assessments on groups of students or individual students ... outside of merely not accepting any Muslim students, which I would argue would be a bad policy.

Also, to my understanding, there has been no proof of any kind that any of these students has been linked to any intent to commit any acts of terrorism. In essence, in retrospect, there is nothing more significant about these students not showing up for class than there is a bunch of students from Sweden not showing up for class. Although I am not saying that we shouldn't be more suspect of Muslim country students than Swedish students -- I absolutely agree that we should.

I do take comfort, however, in knowing that schools are now required to track and report when students under these visas do not show up. That was being abused in a big way prior to 9-11, and appears to be a real improvement in our homeland security process. And I think it was actually the right move for this particular issue to be escalated the way it was. Given the circumstances and the nationality of the students, it was imperative that they be found, and it sounds like the process worked well (would have been perfect if they found all 11 of them).

But in terms of MSU being at fault? I don't think there should be any fault placed on the school. They did their job perfectly (reporting the missing students ASAP).

Bay Area Cat wrote:
I assume/hope that whatever Federal agency is now in charge of this sort of thing (Homeland Security?) reviewed each student and approved their visa. They are the gate for filtering students, as I understand it, not the individual schools. In fact, I doubt individual schools have even the beginnings of an infrastructure to do security checks or make assessments on groups of students or individual students ... outside of merely not accepting any Muslim students, which I would argue would be a bad policy.

You are correct here...all 17 students were interviewed and checked out by the US Government before being given their student visas. Actually, it was originally 20 students but 3 were not allowed to come for whatever reason. MSU did what they were supposed to do; report the students when they didn't show up within a few days of their scheduled arrival.

Excellent source of info on this topic:

http://www.montana.edu/cpa/faqegyptstudents.html

Thank you BAC and MSU01 for the additional information on these students. When the story first broke the media gave none of this information. I still haven't seen any of this outside of your posts.

Once again posters on the internet do a better, more thorough job of delivering news than did our dinosaur media.