HELP! From budget cuts to "Homeland Security," BushCo = POISON to arts&ed!

[Sparkly]

There's a specific question at the end of this, but it's only the "problem du jour" of my work, all thanks to BushCo.

I work in arts and education -- two things that get the budget axe FIRST whenever things get tight (= whenever Republicans are in office).

During the Clinton years, of course, things took off and were going great. One campus of our state university system built a beautiful new arts facility where I established my program, and I was teaching as a guest in other states at prominent schools, as well.

Then came BushCo, our Repug governor, and huge budget issues all over the country in education. It's not just about government funding directly to the schools -- I teach grad students, teachers and other professionals, so it's also about how well *they* are doing. It's about grants, reimbursements, foundations, endowments, and other private funding, and how well all those are doing.

First came dried-up funding for "outside artists" from an important school I'd taught at each summer for years. I was replaced with a grad student.

Then came HUGE tuition increases at the local university with the beautiful arts center. The costs to attend my program were beyond what I could afford, myself! With cuts affecting teachers in the area, that presented a hurdle that severely curtailed registration. (And the grounds that were once dutifully cared for with sprinklers and mowing and plantings etc. became suddenly weedy and unwatered, while in the classroom tiles were torn up from the floor, equipment was in disrepair, etc.) The icing on the cake: Marriott, which practically holds the school hostage with its ownership of dorms, made outrageous contractual obligations for the program that would take a whole separate post to get into. Facing losses, the school tried to make ME responsible for that contract (as "independent"), which I refused.

This year, I moved my program to a prestigious, private community music school where I already teach -- and the course begins Monday. The move makes it a non-credit course, but lowers tuition; a contract with a lovely local hotel makes housing reasonable, but twice the price of dorms unless people double-up. In sum, the minimum number of students (teachers) required to make ends meet is more than twice that of the local university, but I celebrated last week when we just made that number! Yippee!!

Or so I thought...

Homeland Security is now the issue. This is a specialized course that has national and international interest, but can't survive on local interest alone.

One woman, coming from British Columbia, is a Japanese citizen. Apparently, her passport, although valid, is 8 years old and doesn't contain the machine-readable code now required by Homeland Security for Visa waiver. http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/id_visa/vwp/vwp_digital_photos.xml

Another student, a Polish citizen living in Miami, needed her as a roommate for the local hotel. She can't afford it on her own, she's 8 months pregnant and can't be commuting far (my house is actually pretty far, plus we have cigarette smoke here) so I may lose her, too. Both have paid for non-refundable flights.

The question is: Does anybody know if it's possible for a Japanese passport NOT to have that "machine-readable" code, depicted here http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/numbers/mrp.html and here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3953237.stm?
I'm wondering if my Japanese student is mistaken.

And the moral is: If you work in Arts and/or Education, REPUBLICANS ARE POISON TO YOUR WORK!!!

:banghead: