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When political asylees and refugees apply for admission to U.S. colleges and universities, they are often incorrectly treated as foreign students. But a whole different set of rules apply that international educators need to know. BY DAVID TOBENKIN
A s child, Abdulai Bah attended Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone-in a sense. He and his friends would walk around the well-tended and isolated campus, interview students actually attending the school, and pretend they too were attending. "My dream had always been to go to college," Bah says. "We'd go there and envy the students. It was just a way of us trying to show we could reach a dream that we probably wouldn't be able to reach, because in Sierra Leone you must pay for your education yourself and there was probably no way we would be able to do this."
Challenges beyond economics were soon to make his dream of a higher education even more difficult. Bah's gentle face belies a very difficult 24 years on the planet. Born in Sierra Leone, he was nine years old when the war from Liberia spilled into that country. His mother and brother were soon killed in the war. At age 14, he was forced to flee to join relatives in the neighboring country of Guinea. But then, after a few years, the Guinean government began accusing the Leonese refugees of subversion and in 2000 began repatriating them to Sierra Leone, where they faced persecution or death at the hands of the government. With the help of friends, Bah managed to escape and travel illegally by truck to Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, and then Senegal. Despite the moves, Bah was one of the fortunate ones; in addition to surviving, he was able to get formal elementary and secondary education through United Nations classes and local public schools in Guinea.
Later that year, a friend helped Bah obtain documentation to come to the United States. There was just one problem: the documents were false and Bah was arrested when he arrived in the United States. Fortunately, Immigration and Naturalization Service interviewers asked what would happen if he was deported to his home country. Bah explained that he faced possible death because of the ongoing war. He was...