The U.S. Department of Education proposes to extend the program in which it matches personal data of resident alien students with data from the Department of Homeland Security  and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, for the purpose of establishing their eligibility for financial aid.

We oppose this proposal, as explained below, given the sensitivity of the personal  information involved, and the fact that the US Education Department has been repeatedly shown to have faulty data security protections.  Most recently the IRS pulled the FAFSA Data Retrieval Tool off the US Education Department website after discovering that the personal data of as many as 100,000 taxpayers may have been breached.  Until the Department’s data security protections can be significantly strengthened, this data exchange should not occur.

See the notice here: https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=ED-2017-FSA-0034  We urge others to join us in opposing the extension of this program by posting your comments here. The new deadline to submit comments has been extended to May 19, 2017. Thank you!