Jung Yeun Kim

From Correspondent Jim Hill

IRVINE, California (CNN) -- The University of California at Irvine may seem a world away from the financial problems of Asia. But for international students such as Jung Yeun Kim, those economic woes threaten her ability to continue her studies.

With her non-resident status, "I am paying four times more than a regular student," she says, which has an "incredible effect on my family (in South Korea) and me."

That's because her tuition must be paid in U.S. dollars, and currencies in some Asian countries have been sharply devalued.

CNN's Jim Hill reports

For example, Thai student Prechaporn Suwatnodon says with the plunge of the Thai baht, his parents would have to work 16 hours a day to keep the same flow of dollars coming his way.

However, the U.S. government has taken a new step to help students from beleaguered Asian countries. Normally, international students studying in the United States must be enrolled full time and cannot take a job off campus. But that rule is being relaxed for students from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and the Philippines.

"We're hoping that it will allow these students, whose means of financial support come from one of those five countries, to remain in the United States to complete their studies," says Jackie Bendarz of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

College officials hope the relaxed rules will be of particular help to those financially suffering students who are close to graduation.

"Their families have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education in the United States, and to leave right now without the degree is heartbreaking," says Suzanne Blough of the University of California at Irvine.

Across the country, there are some 80,000 international students enrolled in U.S. colleges.

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