By GUSTAVO SOARES

If you’re not a U.S. citizen and you want to come to BYU, you’d better have a few thousand dollars lying around.
Starting summer semester 2010, incoming international students will have to pay $4,000 as a deposit to be returned upon graduation — an announcement that is causing controversy on campus.
Previously, incoming international students had to pay a $4,000 deposit their first semester, but they could use the money immediately after arriving to the U.S. according to their own discretion.
This new policy affects both incoming freshmen and transfer students, which stirred some contention among incoming transfer students from the LDS Business College. Students attending LDSBC created a Facebook group to protest against the new policy.
Ksenia Andriyanova, a student from Russia at LDSBC and creator of the Facebook group, said many students at LDSBC will not be able to transfer to BYU starting summer semester because of this new policy. She said students leaving LDSBC this semester, who would have transferred to BYU during the summer or fall, will have to return to their home countries with an associate’s degree, which some countries do not recognize as a valid diploma.
The letter with 150 signatures from LDSBC students was mailed Monday to BYU’s President’s Council petitioning against the new policy, said Andriyanova.
Sarah Westerberg, associate dean of students, said the change was implemented as a way to protect international students who increasingly find themselves in financial hardship because their sponsors stop paying their tuitions.
“We want to help students have a better idea of the actual costs and theContinued from Page 1

reality of coming to BYU,” Westerberg said. “Some students who were going to come maybe need to spend more time working to get that $4,000 deposit so they can have that money for when they arrive.”
Before graduating, international students may use $3,000 of the deposit money after demonstrating financial hardship; the remaining $1,000 will be held and used for a plane ticket to return home, Westerberg said.
While the money is held by BYU, it will accumulate interest in an escrow account returned to the student upon graduation.
Compared to other schools in the U.S., the deposit international students are required to pay is among the highest in the country. Some universities and other educational institutions don’t require a deposit at all, Westberg said.
She said this decision came from the President’s Council because “it impacts a lot of people and it could potentially be a very contentious decision.”
 “I think it is discriminatory in the most literal sense of the word,” said Nathan Wertz, a senior from Oregon majoring in international relations. “The students who don’t have the financial means are being discriminated against and it limits the opportunity for less-fortunate international students to come here and break their own cycle of poverty.”
Unlike American students, internationals have to prove they have all the funds necessary to support their entire college career. This practice is part of a federal immigration law and is not solely a BYU policy.
 “I don’t see the reason why they would have such a policy,” said Salvael Ortega, a junior from Mexico majoring in business management. “I can see how these people would come in and stay, but they already ask $4,000 and it goes towards tuition.”
Wertz said he has respect for all the international students he knows and they have the utmost respect and appreciation for America and BYU.
“They should not be penalized for not being American,” Wertz said.