The post-Sept. 11 United States has not been especially friendly to Boston University’s international students especially those from the Middle East. From bearing the brunt of racial profiling efforts at airports to needing to file every detail of their lives with the federal government, life for them has become more and more a maze of security checkpoints and red tape.

‘I feel uncomfortable, and it’s getting worse,’ said Ahmet Baspinar, a Metropolitan College graduate student from Turkey.

He said things have become very unpleasant for international students over the past two years, as the government has dialed up the terrorism rhetoric and dialed down peoples’ fear of racial profiling.

Baspinar said a recent trip to Canada cost him five hours at the American border, where officials removed his car seats and searched his car, used search dogs and asked him if he was Muslim or from the Middle East.

But new security precautions are not just affecting international students at security lines.

Friday marked the final business day before the Immigration and Naturalization Service mandated that all U.S. colleges and universities begin feeding information to its Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, a centralized computer system enabling INS to monitor the travel plans of all foreigners studying in America under student visas. The new system replaces a paper-backed system, which was monitored only at a local level.

The original Jan. 30 deadline was extended by two weeks after colleges complained the system was not responding properly. However, Boston University officials said they have been feeding information into SEVIS since Jan. 30.

SHA sophomore Gayatri Ramnani said the federal government’s monitoring of international students has become uncomfortably intrusive.

‘Everything is being monitored down to what classes I drop while Americans are free to adjust their classes as they please,’ she said, referring to an INS regulation requiring notification within days of any changes to foreign students’ academic schedules.

Ramnani also said she needed to apply for a new student visa simply because the wording of her college major was written incorrectly on one of her travel forms.

‘It will be easier when visa information is all in one computerized system,’ Ramnani said.

But Ramnani said computers do not make everything perfect.

‘I’m all for tighter security,’ Ramnani said, acknowledging the maximum penalty for printing false information on a visa is deportation or imprisonment. ‘But with computers there are always mistakes.’

Still, racial profiling remains the most uncomfortable part of the post-Sept. 11 United States. Ramnani, who is British-born but culturally Indian, said she has witnessed racial profiling because she is often mistaken for being Middle Eastern.

CAS sophomore Omar Al-Hinai, who is studying at BU on a student visa from Saudi Arabia, said things have become worse for students like him recently. The Immigration and Naturalization Service released an advisory last month outlining ‘Special Registration’ for students entering the country from ‘states that sponsor terrorism,’ including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan.

Special registration allows INS officials to fingerprint, photograph and interrogate any citizen from one of the 25 ‘states that sponsor terrorism’ upon entry into the United States and requires citizens of those countries to register their visas in person at an INS office.

‘If it really does help [national security] then I don’t mind it at all,’ Al-Hinai said.