Demonstrating the extent to which the government’s anti-terrorism measures have affected quotidian life, some foreign students find themselves stranded and unable to return to the United States due to complications with their student visas.The New York Times devoted a lengthy article on the subject of student visa delays and the havoc it has wrecked on the academic community. As a result of the September 11 tragedy, the State Department has become wary of foreign students in the United States, and President Bush issued a directive that mandated increased surveillance of foreign students.  There is currently a “technology alert list,” that lists 150 areas of study which have the potential of transferring sensitive information and technology to other nations.

While foreign students whose areas of focus lie within the benign bounds of the humanities fare comparatively better, the visa application process may prove to be a bureaucratic nightmare for students looking to study disciplines such as nuclear technology, immunology, and urban planning. There are approximately 600,000 foreign students studying in American colleges and universities, about half of whom study technology and science. Some students who have returned to their home country during their course of study—to visit their family members or, in the particularly tragic case of Xiaomei Jiang , who returned home after both of her parents were killed in a traffic accident—find themselves stranded and unable to return to the United States due to complications with their student visas.

Students whose student visas are submitted to the State Department for review are at the mercy of bureaucratic inefficiency. The State Department, the Defense Department, the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and several other agencies all have a say in the visa review process. There is no limit on the amount of time that a review can take. While only about 0.05 percent of the visa applications filed in 2003 will eventually be rejected, the students whose applications are accepted can still suffer from horrendous delays. Classes start before a student’s visa application is processed, and stranded students are forced to put their plans on hold, uncertain of when they may return to the United States to continue their academic careers.

This lengthy visa review process has had disastrous consequences, particularly since foreign students comprise about a quarter of the study body at top graduate schools. Graduate students are stranded, unable to complete their teaching assistant duties; scholars cancel their lectures. And the freedom of intellectual exchange in a market place of ideas has come under attack. Irving Lerch, director of international affairs at the American Physical Society, stated that “the health and vitality of our scientific research depends on the open and free exchange of ideas. Without such exchange, science cannot survive.”

We can only hope that students remain undeterred and continue to want to study in the United States. If this surveillance process drives students away from America and into the more welcoming arms of Britain, Australia, and other nations, the United States will be sapped of the vitality and intellectual progress of its foreign scholars.  

Mimi Hanaoka