WASHINGTON, Dec 27: Many Muslim students have refused to visit home during the winter vacations because they fear that they might not be able to return to the United States if they went.

Reports in the US media that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is asking colleges and universities around the country to provide information about foreign students have further increased their fears.

Several colleges also have advised their students to stay on campus during the holidays and not to visit home except for family emergencies.

Reports in prominent newspapers like Washington Post, New York Times and Chicago Tribune quote FBI officials as saying that the Patriot Act, passed after the Sept 11, allows them to seek any information they need to avoid further terror attacks.

Some colleges and universities disagree. They argue that providing such information to the FBI would violate federal laws that guarantee personal freedom of every person living in the United States.

The US Department of Education also indicated in a general advisory this year that some of the information now sought by the FBI cannot be provided without a court order or subpoena.

In another related development, Oklahoma State University has advised foreign students studying their not to leave the country.

The university fears that since US embassies abroad take two to three weeks to process a visa, an international student visiting home may not be able to return on time for the classes. Besides, there are also strong chances of students being denied re-entry into the United States.

Besides, the failure to return on time may also affect a student’s visa status and therefore it makes more sense for the students to stay on campus, the university says.

Meanwhile, the FBI is not the only government agency seeking personal information about foreign students. A recent law called SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) already requires all educational students to provide similar information to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The INS is building a separate database to track more than 200,000 foreign students who enrol in American schools each year.

Before the Patriot Act took effect, the law governing the privacy of student records, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, allowed schools to provide only “directory information,” such as names, ages and birth dates, to law enforcement officers.

But the previous law required schools to obtain students’ consent for providing such information without a court order.

Kashif Khan, a Pakistani student at the Oklahoma State University, told a US news agency that all these developments were preventing him from visiting home this winter.

Khan has been a computer science student for the last two-and-a-half-year. He worries that if he left now, US immigration officials might not let him return.

The same fear kept him in Oklahoma over the summer and caused him to miss his sister’s wedding.