IDENTIFICATION OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

On March 19, 2009 I sent an email describing an issue with the proper identification of international students, including Canadians. In that email I described the current method for identifying international students as follows.
CURRENT METHOD OF IDENTIFYING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Currently we are counting international students using an extract of student data (UM_STUD_EXT_VW) and the RESIDENCY field with values of CAN or INTNL. We are identifying the country of international students from their home address.
REVISED METHOD OF IDENTIFYING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Based on feedback that I received and to be consistent with race and ethnicity reporting, international students, including Canadian students, will be identified as those with a Citizenship_Status of 4 (Alien Temporary or Nonresident Alien) and the country will be retrieved from the CITIZENSHIP table instead of the home address.
The following represents the correct way to code the citizenship information for Alien Temporary students.

• The Citizenship table should contain at least two rows for each Alien Temporary student. One row should have the COUNTRY of USA and the CITIZENSHIP_STATUS of 4. The 2^nd row should have the home country of the student and generally a CITIZENSHIP_STATUS of N OR Blank.

FIELDS IN UM_STUD_EXT_VW

The UM_STUD_EXT_VW view contains the following fields relevant to determining if a student is international.

Residency (tuition residency)
Country (from home address)
Citizenship_Status (from Citizenship table)
Um_Country_USA (from Citizenship table)
Um_Country_Oth (from Citizenship table)

Residency

This is the tuition residency of a student from the RESIDENCY_OFF table and can have the following values:

IS
OS
NEBHE
CAN
INTNL

This field will not be used for identifying international students.

Country

This is the country from the home address of the student.

CITIZENSHIP_STATUS

This is the CITIZENSHIP_STATUS from the Citizenship table for the row with USA as the country. International students, including Canadian students, will be identified as those with a Citizenship_Status of 4 (Alien Temporary or Nonresident Alien). All of the values for this field are as follows:

• 1 Native: US citizen by birth.
• 2 Naturalized: US citizen by naturalization.
• 3 Alien permanent (Resident alien): A person who is not a citizen or national of the United States but who has been admitted as a legal immigrant for the purpose of obtaining permanent resident alien status (and who holds either an alien registration card (Form I-551 or I-151), a Temporary Resident Card (Form I-688), or an Arrival-Departure Record (Form I-94) with a notation that conveys legal immigrant status such as Section 207 Refugee, Section 208 Asylee, Conditional Entrant Parolee or Cuban-Haitian). Note: For race/ethnicity reporting, resident aliens are to be reported in the appropriate race/ethnicity categories along with United States citizens.
• 4 Alien temporary (Nonresident alien): A person who is not a citizen or national of the United States and who is in this country on a visa or temporary basis and does not have the right to remain indefinitely. Note: For race/ethnicity reporting, nonresident aliens are to be reported in a separate category and not in a race or ethnicity category.
• N Citizenship Status Not Indicated: A person coded as unknown citizenship status.
• Blank Unknown Citizenship Status: A person with missing or unknown citizenship status.
• (Added 4/3/19 per Janet Boucouvalas) R Refugee: A person coded as a known refugee.

It should be noted that for IPEDS race/ethnicity reporting purposes, only U.S. citizens and Foreign Citizens with Permanent Residency are to be included in the race/ethnicity categories. Foreign Nationals who are temporarily in the U.S. are to be counted in the Nonresident Alien category. Those that are not in the U.S. are to be counted in the Race and Ethnicity Unknown category.

Um_Country_USA

This is the country from the Citizenship table and is USA when there is a row in the table with USA as the country, otherwise it is blank.

Um_Country_Oth

This is the country from the Citizenship table when there is a row in the table with a country other than USA. In some cases there are multiple rows in the Citizenship table with a country other than USA. The country to be selected for the UM_Country_Oth field will be based on the following order of precedence for the associated Citizenship_Status:

1. N
2. Blank
3. Any other status

This field will be used to identify the Country of Alien Temporary students.

REVIEW OF CURRENT CODING USING UM_STUD_EXT_VW

When a query is run against the UM_STUD_EXT_VW view for the spring 2009 semester to retrieve all students who might be international students (CITIZENSHIP_STATUS = '4' OR RESIDENCY IN ('CAN', 'INTNL')), a number of data anomalies are identified:

1. There are students with a RESIDENCY of CAN or INTNL who do not have a Citizenship_Status of 4.
2. There are students with a RESIDENCY of CAN or INTNL who have a Citizenship_Status of 4 but do not have a 2^nd row in the Citizenship table that has the home country of the student. Without this 2^nd row in the Citizenship table, the UM_COUNTRY_OTH field is blank.

Attached is a list of spring 2009 students that illustrate the above data problems that also includes those students who are coded correctly.
The attached spreadsheet has as its last field the CALCULATED COUNTRY. This represents my best guess as to the country of students who appear to be Canadian or International students. The following is the logic for this calculated field.

CASE

WHEN Citizenship status = '1' THEN 'USA'
WHEN Citizenship status = '2' THEN 'USA'
WHEN Citizenship status = '3 THEN 'USA'
WHEN Um country oth <> ' ' THEN Um country oth
WHEN Residency = 'CAN' THEN 'CAN'
WHEN Residency = 'INTNL' AND ( Country <> 'USA' AND Country <> ' ' ) THEN Country
WHEN Citizenship status = '4' AND ( Country <> 'USA' AND Country <> ' ' ) THEN Country
WHEN Citizenship status = '4' THEN 'OTH'
WHEN Residency = 'INTNL' THEN 'OTH'
ELSE 'USA'

END

Unless I hear to the contrary, I will begin using Citizenship_Status of 4 to identify international students.