The moment Faisal Alhazmi heard the names of the hijackers involved in last year's terrorist attacks, he wished he could have become invisible.

Like most of the hijackers, Alhazmi is from Saudi Arabia. He has the same last name as two of the hijackers, who also had lived in Arizona. And he's studying for his airline pilot's license at Chandler-Gilbert Community College.

Despite fear of retaliation and seeing an exodus of foreign students returning home after pleas from their families, Alhazmi is happy he stayed. He wishes he could leave the country to visit his family, but he does not dare because he'd never expect to get his student visa renewed.

With this fall's semester under way, international students at Arizona colleges and universities still worry about being assaulted, though they're even more wary of new U.S. government roadblocks to their education in the name of national security. So, some have decided to study in Europe or Australia.

Foreign students, especially those from Middle Eastern countries, say they have friends who will miss school this year because of months-long delays in applying for or renewing their visas. Many who remain in the United States believe they're policy scapegoats in the U.S. government's ongoing war on terrorism.

"The most challenging thing right now is not to be able to see my family and friends," said Alhazmi, 23, who said the FBI questioned him three times in the weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "I still have faith in America, but it's sad when you see people rejected from a job or school just because they come from the Middle East."

The Phoenix FBI office declined to comment on any investigation related to foreign students.

Colleges feeling impact

University administrators in Arizona say they're just starting to see the impact of immigration policy changes: Some campuses are reporting a decrease in foreign-student enrollment. But the changes are so recent that trends won't be clear until next academic year, administrators said.

"We're working hard to respond to new and different information requirements, so the impact is still shaking out," said Bob Soza, dean of students at Arizona State University, which reported 3,544 international students on campus this fall, slightly down from 3,611students a year ago.

According to the Institute for International Education, a worldwide educational exchange organization based in New York City, foreign-student enrollment in the United States was nearly 550,000 foreign students last academic year, the most recent count available.

To Gailynn Valdes, international education director at Mesa Community College, the impact is visible. The college had accepted 30 Middle Eastern students this fall, but only 15 showed up.

"There's no other explanation other than it's more difficult for them to get here now," Valdes said.

Most of the 19 identified hijackers entered the country with U.S. government-issued visas. One of them, Hani Hanjour, who took flying classes in Scottsdale and was enrolled in an English course at the University of Arizona, had a student visa. Two other hijackers first came to the country as tourists but later applied for student visas, which ironically were granted to them posthumously, months after the attacks.

The bureaucratic fiasco only increased national politicians' concern about the Immigration and Naturalization Service and its screening of foreign students. As a result, universities and colleges now are required to take part in an Internet-based government program, originally created in 1996, designed to keep track of foreign students. All campuses must be online by Jan. 30 or they will not be allowed to accept foreign students.

The move makes some Middle Eastern students conclude their ethnic and religious backgrounds are proof enough for others to link them with terrorism. Still, many appreciate the opportunity to live and study in the United States and don't mind being closely monitored in the name of security.

"It's an eye for an eye," said Mustapha Choufani, a 26-year-old student from Morocco studying electrical engineering at Glendale Community College. "It's better to play it safe from the start, because if it happens again, we'll be blamed first again."

Frustrating situation

But other international students say the government takes monitoring too far by rejecting them just because they come from countries designated as terrorist-friendly.

In fact, some students disdain their home governments and come here to study to enjoy the political freedom. It is disappointing, they said, to feel unwelcome.

"I feel like I'm trapped in a glass cube where nobody can understand me," said Pamela Karimi, 27, who's finishing master's degrees in architecture and comparative literature at the University of Arizona. "I'm deemed a terrorist just because I come from Iran. But I don't kill people. All I want to do is be a researcher for the rest of my life."

She said she has lost the utopian image she has had of the United States. Many of her friends were prevented from returning to school because of new regulations.

Such tales rile Victor Johnson. They exemplify the U.S. government's illogical crackdown on foreign students since last year's attacks, said Johnson, lobbyist for the Association for International Educators in Washington, D.C. The association bills itself as the largest non-profit international education group in the world, with 8,500 members in 80 countries.

Johnson questioned the creation of a foreign-student tracking system, pointing out that most visitors enter the country on tourist or temporary work visas. He said the government is looking for any excuse to boot out students, who now lose legal status when they don't carry a full class schedule.

"We're fooling ourselves if we think we're better protected by monitoring 3 percent of foreigners," Johnson said. According to government figures, 238,005 student visas were issued in fiscal 2002, slightly more than 4 percent of the nearly 5.8 million total visas. In fiscal 2001, the government gave 298,730 of 7.8 million visas to students.

Advocacy groups and college administrators have long argued that U.S. society benefits from foreign students, intellectually and financially. In fact, Johnson's group estimated that foreign students, who pay the highest tuition and have few financial aid opportunities, pumped $11 billion into the U.S. economy last year, $174.5 million in Arizona. The figure was reached by compiling tuition, fees and enrollment figures, living expenses and other research studies.

The U.S. government acknowledged that foreign-student applications from certain countries are taking longer to process than before the attacks, but it denies picking on students.

New reality

Delays are part of today's increased-security reality, said Stuart Patt, spokesman for the State Department's consular affairs bureau in Washington.

Patt said all visa seekers are treated equally, adding that student applications take longer because several government agencies conduct background checks as mandated under new regulations.

The government supports foreign students who enter and stay legally, but they, like everyone else, should expect more inconveniences, Patt said.

But if national security is the top priority now, then the government should drastically restructure the foreign-student program, a nationally renowned scholar argued in a recent report for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank based in Washington.

George Borjas, an economics and social policy professor at Harvard University, criticized colleges for caring primarily about reaching into foreign students' deep pockets, even at the expense of national security. Foreign students also provide cheap labor for colleges, much like low-paid illegal Mexican workers for U.S. farmers, he wrote.

Borjas slammed the government's immigration policy, adding that even new policies won't stop potential terrorists from entering. The country doesn't get as much from foreign students as they get from the country, Borjas concluded.

His economic analysis looked at students' contribution as on-campus workers. But students said there are countless other ways they propel the U.S. economy. They and their dollars won't likely be turned away soon, they countered.

"We pay taxes, we pay rent, we shop, we eat, we pay health insurance, like everyone else," said a student from Oman, who asked not to be identified for personal safety concerns. "If we stop coming, they'll come and beg us to come back."

Had he known how much the tide would turn against foreign students, he said, he would have chosen to study elsewhere.

His cousin back home didn't mull over his study-abroad decision too long. He's now in school in Australia.