SEVIS Newsletter: April 2009 Quarterly E-Newsletter

SEVIS II UPDATE

SEVIS II will be deployed in two phases with the first deployment occurring in October of this year and the second deployment occurring in March of 2010. The purpose of the two-phased deployment is to facilitate the migration of data from SEVIS to SEVIS II during the interim period.

During this migration period, students and exchange visitors will be asked to verify the data in their migrated SEVIS II record. If there is inaccurate data, they will be provided with instructions on how to correct it. The data will be corrected in SEVIS, and re-migrated to SEVIS II. SEVIS II will also pair records that belong to the same individual. Students will be asked to validate whether the records being paired do, in fact, belong to them. They will also have the opportunity to identify records that belong to them that the system may not have identified as theirs. There are four planned migrations during this period between deployments to ensure that all corrections are made and their successful migration is validated.

Also during this migration period, school officials will establish their own accounts as well and will be asked to provide additional information for their I-17 relative to SEVIS II. Most significantly, schools will be asked to input academic calendars and provide course of study or degree plans information based on Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) Codes. The new I-17 will also require information regarding student enrollment, tuition, staffing, accreditation, and licensing. None of the information added to the new I-17 will require adjudication, although the SEVP School Certification Branch will review it. Please note that the SEVIS II DS-3036 requires no additional data, so all that will be required from sponsor officials is validation of the SEVIS II data and correction if necessary.

SEVIS II will provide the unique identifier component to students in the system-- also known as the Immigration Identification Number (IIN). The IIN promises to be one of the main features of SEVIS II allowing for the creation of “one person-one record” accounts. This, in return, will help ensure that data is accurately entered. Access to this consistent information in the visa and DHS databases will greatly enhance the ability to properly match records.

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