The Visa Trap
January 18, 2004
By YILU ZHAO
For Yang Wang, 2003 was a year of waiting. A 26-year-old
doctoral student in civil engineering at Stanford
University, he had returned to China to visit his parents
in December 2002.
He had planned to stay just three weeks. He would have to
stay at least 11 months, which is how long it took
Washington to conduct a security check for his return visa
to the United States.
Bored, he started an Internet chat room for those in a
similar plight, and it quickly became a regular haunt for
hundreds of students awaiting security checks. The visitors
exchange tips about American visa officers in Beijing
(''Don't go to the bald guy if you can manage it. He's
mean. The pink-faced woman is nicer''). They offer advice
on how to approach powerful people to intervene in their
cases, including a template for letters to members of
Congress. Most important, the chat room lets visitors vent.
One post from Beijing read: ''I have been back for five
months now. My parents have spent most of that time
worrying about my visa. They wait every day beside the
phone for the call from the embassy. I am almost despondent
now. For the first time, I understand what it means to be
helpless.''
Occasionally, some of the site's Beijing visitors meet at a
coffee shop or teahouse. More than a dozen, including Mr.
Wang, attended a recent gathering. Their voices were tinged
with sarcasm and bitterness as they spoke of their
experiences. Some wouldn't give their full names to a
reporter, fearing that criticism of the American government
could bring retaliation.
Over cups of bubble tea -- flavored teas with tapioca beads
-- horror stories were exchanged. Jane Wang, a 22-year-old
who is not related to Yang Wang, had to postpone her
wedding, which was scheduled for December. She was in
Beijing waiting for a visa to attend Ohio State, while her
fiance, a Chinese graduate student already studying in the
United States, had decided not to return to Beijing to
avoid being stranded. ''What the American government is
doing to us is not humane,'' Ms. Wang said.
Another student, also stuck in Beijing, said he was close
to splitting with his wife, who is at the University of
Washington in Seattle. Their relationship has withered
under the pressure of a long wait.
Yang Wang, who goes by Andy at Stanford and wears spiky
hair and loves American culture, wished for some
predictability in the checking process. The American
Embassy tells applicants that their visas could arrive any
day and that most checks last six weeks. After waiting half
a year, Mr. Wang's case was mysteriously closed in July by
Washington, forcing him to reapply.
''The cruelest part is the indefinite wait,'' Mr. Wang
said. ''You don't know when or whether the visa would come.
If they had told you it definitely would be six months or a
year, you could at least plan your life.''
Another student, Fei Liu, who has been admitted to the
University of Washington to study medical image analysis,
said: ''When you are young, you have the determination and
the drive to get something major done. The wait really saps
the youthful vitality out of you.''
American consulates started paying special attention to
visa applicants with science or technology backgrounds in
the summer of 2002, part of the State Department's response
to a directive issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11
attacks. The directive called for stricter enforcement of
immigration laws and greater surveillance of foreign
students in the United States.
In May 2002, the department sent a memorandum to all
American visa officers asking them to watch for applicants
whose areas of study appeared on the ''technology alert
list,'' also known as the sensitive major list. Among the
150 concentrations of study are nuclear technology,
engineering, immunology and seemingly benign fields like
community development and urban planning.
The memorandum tells the consular officers, who have much
discretion in issuing visas, to err on the side of caution
and to send every uncertain case to Washington for review.
The aim, the State Department says, is to keep out
terrorists and to prevent the transfer of sensitive
technology to certain parts of the world.
Such checks actually go back to at least the 1950's, when
the United States wanted to prevent the transfer of
technology to Communist countries, although consulates
seldom scrutinized the backgrounds of students or visiting
scholars. In the 12 months ending on Nov. 30, 2003,
however, almost 15,000 technology- or science-related cases
were submitted for review, more than twice those of a year
before, according to the State Department.
''We just want to be more careful about screening for
people who would hurt our country,'' says Janice Jacobs,
deputy assistant secretary of state for visa services.
''Security is our No. 1 priority after Sept. 11. There is
no question about that.''
Although the Chinese represent 11 percent of foreign
students in the United States, a recent survey by a
consortium of three educational organizations showed that
57 percent of student visa delays involve Chinese
applicants. Students from Russia and India have also
experienced significant delays.
Ms. Jacobs says that the State Department doesn't focus on
a particular country, but a consular officer in Shanghai
said that American officials in China were particularly
worried about the transfer of technology that could be used
to make weapons.
Male students from Arab or Muslim countries undergo an
additional round of checks for terrorist links. Students
from other parts of the world who have backgrounds in the
social sciences or the humanities are not subject to the
same scrutiny, nor are most undergraduate students who have
yet to declare majors.
Once a case reaches Washington, officials from the State
Department, the Defense Department, the Department of
Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other
agencies decide its fate. Only about 0.05 percent, or fewer
than 10 of all 2003 applications, are eventually rejected,
Ms. Jacobs says. She would not specify whether Washington
had detected terrorism-related activity or signs of illegal
technology transfer in the checking process.
While the typical turnaround time for a case is 30 days,
according to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, close to 1,000
science- or technology-related cases were more than three
months old in mid-December.
Stuart Patt, the bureau's spokesman, says there is little
the department can do about the lack of information
provided to applicants. ''There is no real information we
can give applicants,'' Mr. Patt says. ''Their cases are
being processed. We don't know whether the agencies are
looking up something in the database or trying to get a
file from somewhere in the world.''
The new scrutiny has caused some scrambling at top research
institutions. At the beginning of the fall semester, New
York University's physics department scurried to find a
replacement for Jun Zhang, an assistant professor stuck in
China who would have taught a required course for physics
majors. A prominent Russian physicist, Valery Rubakov,
canceled his plan to lecture at the university when he
failed to get a visa. An Iranian graduate student in
astrophysics, who had applied for a visa in Ireland, has
been stranded there since June, missing his
responsibilities as a teaching assistant.
Since most core classes in physics are sequential and
offered only once a year, says Allen Mincer, the department
chairman at N.Y.U., graduate students who miss classes in
September often have to wait until the next September.
''A year is a long time,'' Dr. Mincer says. ''In sciences,
particularly in physics, people are most productive in
their 20's.''
More than a dozen top American research universities have
issued advisories to their foreign students against
traveling outside the United States. According to the
education consortium survey, thousands of foreign graduate
students have missed classes, research projects and
teaching responsibilities after traveling home. At an
international physics conference last summer at the Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., 19 top
Chinese physicists, including the director of the Institute
of High Energy Physics in Beijing, had to cancel because of
the lengthy visa application process.
Irving Lerch, director of international affairs at the
American Physical Society, a sponsor of the conference, is
angry at the situation. ''Our scientific enterprise is very
much imperiled by this kind of policy,'' he says. ''The
health and vitality of our scientific research depends on
the open and free exchange of ideas. Without such exchange,
science cannot survive.''
Around 600,000 foreign students study in American colleges
and universities, with a little more than half in science
and technology. In most of the nation's top graduate
schools, more than a quarter of the students are foreign.
Statistics recently released by the Institute of
International Educators, the Manhattan-based administrator
of the Fulbright program, have raised concerns among
national education organizations. The number of foreign
students enrolled in American colleges and universities
rose by 0.6 percent in 2002, the smallest growth since
1996. In each of the previous two academic years, foreign
enrollment increased by 6.4 percent.
Allan Goodman, the president and chief executive of the
institute, says that the slowed growth can be attributed to
things like last-minute hesitations or home obligations.
But Victor Johnson, the public policy director of NAFSA:
Association of International Educators, has a different
take.
''When you have a clearly identifiable government policy
and a clearly identifiable effect,'' Mr. Johnson says,
''you cannot say it's just a blip on a curve. This could be
the beginning of a long-term decline or leveling off of
international students coming to this country.''
Officials at national organizations like the American
Council on Education support Mr. Johnson's view.
''Colleges and universities are very concerned about their
ability to attract international students,'' says Terry W.
Hartle, a senior vice president of the council. ''Many
countries, like the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany
and Australia are recruiting the same students we are
after, and some students are finding these places more
attractive.''
Indeed, the enrollment of students from China in Australian
colleges grew by 25 percent and students from India by 31
percent last fall, compared with a year ago. In England,
the number of Chinese students grew by 36 percent and
Indian students by 16 percent. Growth was more moderate in
these two countries in previous years, according to local
education agencies that keep data on foreign admissions.
In Beijing, officials at campuses that administer the Test
of English as a Foreign Language -- the exam required for
admissions to most American schools -- say that for the
first time in a decade significantly fewer students are
taking the exam.
''Students are saying, even if you get a perfect score on
that test, most likely you still won't get a visa to go to
America,'' one official says. ''So what's the point?''
Administrators at the University of Michigan say they are
trying to counter the effects of the visa policies. The
director of the Office of International Students and
Scholars, Rodolfo Altamirano, regularly calls stranded
students overseas to keep their spirits up, holds workshops
on immigration policies and presses politicians for
changes.
''We had a Chinese woman stuck in Canada,'' Dr. Altamirano
says. ''I had to call her every day on her cellphone
because hearing my voice made her feel better. We spent
hours and hours calling the American government offices
about her case, but it was worth it because we want the
very best students.''
Earl Lewis, the dean of the University of Michigan Graduate
School, has asked each of its academic departments to admit
its best international applicants as early in the season as
possible to give them more time for visa security checks.
Dr. Lewis and his deputy, John Godfrey, have taken multiple
trips to China to meet admitted and potential Michigan
students.
''For the first time, I started to find Chinese students
who were deeply embittered about America,'' Mr. Godfrey
says. ''For somebody who has worked so hard in an extremely
competitive environment like China or India, to see the
opportunity to attend Michigan or Stanford or M.I.T. drift
away at the last minute, the bitterness is hard to counter.
''The question becomes, 'Am I going to bet everything to
see whether I can get my visa?' Some people have decided
it's not worth it.'' It typically takes two years for a
student from a non-English-speaking country to prepare and
take the English language test and the Graduate Record Exam
to apply for American graduate schools.
In response to criticism from the education and scientific
communities, the State Department has made some changes to
its security check procedures. Last summer, it began to
give student visa applicants priority when scheduling
interviews before the start of semesters. It took
landscaping off the list of sensitive concentrations in
November. It has added a few more liaison officers to
coordinate between security checkers in Washington and the
American consulates. It also plans to replace the telegram
network that connects the consulates and the Washington
office with an electronic system.
The scientific community is not satisfied. ''The State
Department needs people who understand the difference
between research on something dangerous and basic
research,'' says Daniel Marlow, chairman of Princeton's
physics department. The guidelines caution against any
field with the word ''nuclear'' in it, even those with
applications only in medicine.
Students have recommendations of their own. They want the
State Department to be more caring about visa applicants.
Some suggestions: the receptionist at the Beijing embassy
shouldn't hang up when told the caller is checking on the
status of a visa, and applicants shouldn't be put on hold
for an hour when calling the hot line in Washington.
Mr. Wang has finally received clearance from Washington and
is returning to Stanford this month. He says he will not
visit his parents again until he has his Ph.D. because
their anguish about his uncertain future far outweighed the
joy of seeing him. As for why it took the State Department
11 months to check his background, he cites the fact that
his name is common.
But there are more wrenching stories than Mr. Wang's.
Xiaomei Jiang, a doctoral student in physics at the
University of Utah, rushed home to Sichuan Province after
her father and mother died in a traffic accident. She was
unable to get back to defend her thesis in Salt Lake City.
''I could have gone insane, literally,'' says Ms. Jiang,
who is now back in Utah after waiting nine months in China.
''To have your parents die suddenly and to go through
something like that. It was very cruel.''
January 18, 2004
By YILU ZHAO
For Yang Wang, 2003 was a year of waiting. A 26-year-old
doctoral student in civil engineering at Stanford
University, he had returned to China to visit his parents
in December 2002.
He had planned to stay just three weeks. He would have to
stay at least 11 months, which is how long it took
Washington to conduct a security check for his return visa
to the United States.
Bored, he started an Internet chat room for those in a
similar plight, and it quickly became a regular haunt for
hundreds of students awaiting security checks. The visitors
exchange tips about American visa officers in Beijing
(''Don't go to the bald guy if you can manage it. He's
mean. The pink-faced woman is nicer''). They offer advice
on how to approach powerful people to intervene in their
cases, including a template for letters to members of
Congress. Most important, the chat room lets visitors vent.
One post from Beijing read: ''I have been back for five
months now. My parents have spent most of that time
worrying about my visa. They wait every day beside the
phone for the call from the embassy. I am almost despondent
now. For the first time, I understand what it means to be
helpless.''
Occasionally, some of the site's Beijing visitors meet at a
coffee shop or teahouse. More than a dozen, including Mr.
Wang, attended a recent gathering. Their voices were tinged
with sarcasm and bitterness as they spoke of their
experiences. Some wouldn't give their full names to a
reporter, fearing that criticism of the American government
could bring retaliation.
Over cups of bubble tea -- flavored teas with tapioca beads
-- horror stories were exchanged. Jane Wang, a 22-year-old
who is not related to Yang Wang, had to postpone her
wedding, which was scheduled for December. She was in
Beijing waiting for a visa to attend Ohio State, while her
fiance, a Chinese graduate student already studying in the
United States, had decided not to return to Beijing to
avoid being stranded. ''What the American government is
doing to us is not humane,'' Ms. Wang said.
Another student, also stuck in Beijing, said he was close
to splitting with his wife, who is at the University of
Washington in Seattle. Their relationship has withered
under the pressure of a long wait.
Yang Wang, who goes by Andy at Stanford and wears spiky
hair and loves American culture, wished for some
predictability in the checking process. The American
Embassy tells applicants that their visas could arrive any
day and that most checks last six weeks. After waiting half
a year, Mr. Wang's case was mysteriously closed in July by
Washington, forcing him to reapply.
''The cruelest part is the indefinite wait,'' Mr. Wang
said. ''You don't know when or whether the visa would come.
If they had told you it definitely would be six months or a
year, you could at least plan your life.''
Another student, Fei Liu, who has been admitted to the
University of Washington to study medical image analysis,
said: ''When you are young, you have the determination and
the drive to get something major done. The wait really saps
the youthful vitality out of you.''
American consulates started paying special attention to
visa applicants with science or technology backgrounds in
the summer of 2002, part of the State Department's response
to a directive issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11
attacks. The directive called for stricter enforcement of
immigration laws and greater surveillance of foreign
students in the United States.
In May 2002, the department sent a memorandum to all
American visa officers asking them to watch for applicants
whose areas of study appeared on the ''technology alert
list,'' also known as the sensitive major list. Among the
150 concentrations of study are nuclear technology,
engineering, immunology and seemingly benign fields like
community development and urban planning.
The memorandum tells the consular officers, who have much
discretion in issuing visas, to err on the side of caution
and to send every uncertain case to Washington for review.
The aim, the State Department says, is to keep out
terrorists and to prevent the transfer of sensitive
technology to certain parts of the world.
Such checks actually go back to at least the 1950's, when
the United States wanted to prevent the transfer of
technology to Communist countries, although consulates
seldom scrutinized the backgrounds of students or visiting
scholars. In the 12 months ending on Nov. 30, 2003,
however, almost 15,000 technology- or science-related cases
were submitted for review, more than twice those of a year
before, according to the State Department.
''We just want to be more careful about screening for
people who would hurt our country,'' says Janice Jacobs,
deputy assistant secretary of state for visa services.
''Security is our No. 1 priority after Sept. 11. There is
no question about that.''
Although the Chinese represent 11 percent of foreign
students in the United States, a recent survey by a
consortium of three educational organizations showed that
57 percent of student visa delays involve Chinese
applicants. Students from Russia and India have also
experienced significant delays.
Ms. Jacobs says that the State Department doesn't focus on
a particular country, but a consular officer in Shanghai
said that American officials in China were particularly
worried about the transfer of technology that could be used
to make weapons.
Male students from Arab or Muslim countries undergo an
additional round of checks for terrorist links. Students
from other parts of the world who have backgrounds in the
social sciences or the humanities are not subject to the
same scrutiny, nor are most undergraduate students who have
yet to declare majors.
Once a case reaches Washington, officials from the State
Department, the Defense Department, the Department of
Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other
agencies decide its fate. Only about 0.05 percent, or fewer
than 10 of all 2003 applications, are eventually rejected,
Ms. Jacobs says. She would not specify whether Washington
had detected terrorism-related activity or signs of illegal
technology transfer in the checking process.
While the typical turnaround time for a case is 30 days,
according to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, close to 1,000
science- or technology-related cases were more than three
months old in mid-December.
Stuart Patt, the bureau's spokesman, says there is little
the department can do about the lack of information
provided to applicants. ''There is no real information we
can give applicants,'' Mr. Patt says. ''Their cases are
being processed. We don't know whether the agencies are
looking up something in the database or trying to get a
file from somewhere in the world.''
The new scrutiny has caused some scrambling at top research
institutions. At the beginning of the fall semester, New
York University's physics department scurried to find a
replacement for Jun Zhang, an assistant professor stuck in
China who would have taught a required course for physics
majors. A prominent Russian physicist, Valery Rubakov,
canceled his plan to lecture at the university when he
failed to get a visa. An Iranian graduate student in
astrophysics, who had applied for a visa in Ireland, has
been stranded there since June, missing his
responsibilities as a teaching assistant.
Since most core classes in physics are sequential and
offered only once a year, says Allen Mincer, the department
chairman at N.Y.U., graduate students who miss classes in
September often have to wait until the next September.
''A year is a long time,'' Dr. Mincer says. ''In sciences,
particularly in physics, people are most productive in
their 20's.''
More than a dozen top American research universities have
issued advisories to their foreign students against
traveling outside the United States. According to the
education consortium survey, thousands of foreign graduate
students have missed classes, research projects and
teaching responsibilities after traveling home. At an
international physics conference last summer at the Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., 19 top
Chinese physicists, including the director of the Institute
of High Energy Physics in Beijing, had to cancel because of
the lengthy visa application process.
Irving Lerch, director of international affairs at the
American Physical Society, a sponsor of the conference, is
angry at the situation. ''Our scientific enterprise is very
much imperiled by this kind of policy,'' he says. ''The
health and vitality of our scientific research depends on
the open and free exchange of ideas. Without such exchange,
science cannot survive.''
Around 600,000 foreign students study in American colleges
and universities, with a little more than half in science
and technology. In most of the nation's top graduate
schools, more than a quarter of the students are foreign.
Statistics recently released by the Institute of
International Educators, the Manhattan-based administrator
of the Fulbright program, have raised concerns among
national education organizations. The number of foreign
students enrolled in American colleges and universities
rose by 0.6 percent in 2002, the smallest growth since
1996. In each of the previous two academic years, foreign
enrollment increased by 6.4 percent.
Allan Goodman, the president and chief executive of the
institute, says that the slowed growth can be attributed to
things like last-minute hesitations or home obligations.
But Victor Johnson, the public policy director of NAFSA:
Association of International Educators, has a different
take.
''When you have a clearly identifiable government policy
and a clearly identifiable effect,'' Mr. Johnson says,
''you cannot say it's just a blip on a curve. This could be
the beginning of a long-term decline or leveling off of
international students coming to this country.''
Officials at national organizations like the American
Council on Education support Mr. Johnson's view.
''Colleges and universities are very concerned about their
ability to attract international students,'' says Terry W.
Hartle, a senior vice president of the council. ''Many
countries, like the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany
and Australia are recruiting the same students we are
after, and some students are finding these places more
attractive.''
Indeed, the enrollment of students from China in Australian
colleges grew by 25 percent and students from India by 31
percent last fall, compared with a year ago. In England,
the number of Chinese students grew by 36 percent and
Indian students by 16 percent. Growth was more moderate in
these two countries in previous years, according to local
education agencies that keep data on foreign admissions.
In Beijing, officials at campuses that administer the Test
of English as a Foreign Language -- the exam required for
admissions to most American schools -- say that for the
first time in a decade significantly fewer students are
taking the exam.
''Students are saying, even if you get a perfect score on
that test, most likely you still won't get a visa to go to
America,'' one official says. ''So what's the point?''
Administrators at the University of Michigan say they are
trying to counter the effects of the visa policies. The
director of the Office of International Students and
Scholars, Rodolfo Altamirano, regularly calls stranded
students overseas to keep their spirits up, holds workshops
on immigration policies and presses politicians for
changes.
''We had a Chinese woman stuck in Canada,'' Dr. Altamirano
says. ''I had to call her every day on her cellphone
because hearing my voice made her feel better. We spent
hours and hours calling the American government offices
about her case, but it was worth it because we want the
very best students.''
Earl Lewis, the dean of the University of Michigan Graduate
School, has asked each of its academic departments to admit
its best international applicants as early in the season as
possible to give them more time for visa security checks.
Dr. Lewis and his deputy, John Godfrey, have taken multiple
trips to China to meet admitted and potential Michigan
students.
''For the first time, I started to find Chinese students
who were deeply embittered about America,'' Mr. Godfrey
says. ''For somebody who has worked so hard in an extremely
competitive environment like China or India, to see the
opportunity to attend Michigan or Stanford or M.I.T. drift
away at the last minute, the bitterness is hard to counter.
''The question becomes, 'Am I going to bet everything to
see whether I can get my visa?' Some people have decided
it's not worth it.'' It typically takes two years for a
student from a non-English-speaking country to prepare and
take the English language test and the Graduate Record Exam
to apply for American graduate schools.
In response to criticism from the education and scientific
communities, the State Department has made some changes to
its security check procedures. Last summer, it began to
give student visa applicants priority when scheduling
interviews before the start of semesters. It took
landscaping off the list of sensitive concentrations in
November. It has added a few more liaison officers to
coordinate between security checkers in Washington and the
American consulates. It also plans to replace the telegram
network that connects the consulates and the Washington
office with an electronic system.
The scientific community is not satisfied. ''The State
Department needs people who understand the difference
between research on something dangerous and basic
research,'' says Daniel Marlow, chairman of Princeton's
physics department. The guidelines caution against any
field with the word ''nuclear'' in it, even those with
applications only in medicine.
Students have recommendations of their own. They want the
State Department to be more caring about visa applicants.
Some suggestions: the receptionist at the Beijing embassy
shouldn't hang up when told the caller is checking on the
status of a visa, and applicants shouldn't be put on hold
for an hour when calling the hot line in Washington.
Mr. Wang has finally received clearance from Washington and
is returning to Stanford this month. He says he will not
visit his parents again until he has his Ph.D. because
their anguish about his uncertain future far outweighed the
joy of seeing him. As for why it took the State Department
11 months to check his background, he cites the fact that
his name is common.
But there are more wrenching stories than Mr. Wang's.
Xiaomei Jiang, a doctoral student in physics at the
University of Utah, rushed home to Sichuan Province after
her father and mother died in a traffic accident. She was
unable to get back to defend her thesis in Salt Lake City.
''I could have gone insane, literally,'' says Ms. Jiang,
who is now back in Utah after waiting nine months in China.
''To have your parents die suddenly and to go through
something like that. It was very cruel.''
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