University officials have said reports that 91 international students admitted to the university are unaccounted for are false.

“It’s not that 91 students are missing, but rather 91 departure cards that they did not have when they checked it against their database,” said Brenda Thorbs-Weber, assistant director of International Education Services.

“When I spoke to Immigration and Naturalization Services officials in Omaha last week, they said the international student could have lost their card, the airline could have forgotten to give the card to INS, they could have not gone through customs, they could have transferred schools or jobs or a number of other things could have happened.”

Students are not required to turn over their I-94 departure card when they go to Canada or Mexico, which could explain why additional students are unaccounted for.

When they transfer schools or attain employment in the United States, the school or job they transfer to, rather than Iowa State, is responsible for notifying the Immigration and Naturalization Services, Thorbs-Weber said.

INS officials in Omaha sent letters to schools throughout Iowa and Nebraska in October asking them to submit information about international students on campus.

This data, going back to 2000, included the number of foreign students, country of origin, major, if they dropped out or are no longer full-time students, and personal information including name, phone number and address.

“Not all the offices are doing similar searches, but they are all trying to improve their data collection,” said Dennis Peterson, director of International Education Services.

“We are required to have this information available for officials whenever they ask for it, but we are not agents of an intelligence agency. They regularly ask for this information and this type of data collection goes back to the 1950s.”

After gathering the information, they compared departure card information to the information they were given by the colleges and universities.

According to the Omaha World-Herald, 556 international students in Iowa and Nebraska are unaccounted for, 76 of whom didn’t arrive for classes after entering the country on documents from a Nebraska or Iowa school.

INS does not currently have a national database, but is working to implement a new tracking system by January of 2003 that will include information from local law enforcement, the FBI, the CIA and other national and international agencies, Thorbs-Weber said.

INS officials were unavailable for comment.

Thorbs-Weber said she will go to a conference in May to learn more about the tracking system, which has been in the works since 1996 but did not receive sufficient funding until after Sept. 11.

“Less than 2 percent of all people through customs each year are international students, so tracking international students is just a small piece of the larger puzzle,” Peterson said. “The fact is, the overall record keeping of INS needs to be improved, and they are finally getting the funding to do so. The current database and tracking system is not as interactive and thorough as they would like it to be.”

There are 2,384 students and 591 faculty and staff from 119 countries other than the United States at Iowa State, according to a 2002 census compiled by International Education Services.

Of those numbers, 2,045 people are from Asia, 446 are from Europe, 204 are from North and South America, 141 are from Africa, 128 are from the Middle East and 11 are from Australia, New Zealand and the Marshall Islands.