My colleague Jessica Vaughan notes that Hosam Smadi, the Jordanian terrorist arrested in Dallas, came here on a student visa to go to high school. High school? Why on earth would we admit foreign students to go to high school? Foreign students are not immigrants, who have permanent residency and can enroll in whatever high school will take them, but rather people who have no claim to come to the United States but are admitted because a high school approved their admission on a foreign-student (F-1) visa. It turns out there are 20,000 such people, including Smadi’s younger brother, Husein, who was also arrested last week and is “studying for his high school diploma at Wilson High,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. Ironically, the school’s website says “Sorry, Wilson High School does not take out of district students.” So, apparently Americans from, say, nearby Cupertino can’t enroll there but Jordanians can get student visas to fly halfway across the globe to go there.

(I just got off the phone with Daniene Marciano, the principal at Wilson High, and she confirmed that Husein was a student but that Hosam, the terrorist, had never been enrolled in the Santa Clara Unified School District.)

The admission of foreign students is something policymakers haven’t focused on sufficiently. Such visas should only be granted for graduate schools and four-year colleges — no high schools, community colleges, or technical schools, like the Golf Academy of America, the California School of Dog Grooming, or John Paul’s Hair, Nails & Skin Care Institute, all of which are on the list of approved schools to admit foreign students.