NEWS ANALYSIS

SECURITY MEASURES IMPEDE U.S. VISITS
Foreign students, scientists, and businesspeople cannot obtain U.S. visas on time, if at all

JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY, C&EN HONG KONG

Since the autumn of 2001, foreigners attempting to enter the U.S. for temporary visits have faced new difficulties in obtaining visas. Visitors from all over the world are subject to additional scrutiny, whether or not they are nationals of countries accused of sponsoring terrorism.

As a result of visa processing delays and outright denials, many foreigners cannot attend business and scientific meetings in the U.S. Foreign students already in the U.S. have been refraining from visiting their home countries because they might be denied reentry. Prospective foreign students face such delays and high rates of denial of visa applications that they miss months of schooling or decide to study elsewhere.

All respondents to an October joint survey by the Association of American Universities and the Association of International Educators said that "scientific research was delayed or stalled as a result of [visa] delays." The survey revealed an overall drop of 8% in the 2002–03 school year in the number of foreign scholars at U.S. universities compared with 2001–02. The survey further indicated that hundreds of foreign students and scholars had not been able to start the school year on time as a result of visa delays, despite applying six to eight weeks in advance, as was sufficient in the past.

At the Informex trade show held in New Orleans in February, about 70% of Chinese exhibitors were denied visas, says Diane McMahon, vice president of commercial development at the show. As a result, organizers had to convert into meeting space six booths that had been booked by Chinese companies. Several of the individuals who did not get visas had attended Informex in the past four years, McMahon notes.

Held annually, Informex is the U.S.'s largest chemical outsourcing and custom manufacturing trade show and is organized by the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association. This year, it attracted 4,100 visitors from 30 countries. About 40% of the attendees were foreigners, with China representing about one-fourth of them.

In Beijing, Liu Qi Gang, a manager at the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), the arranger for several of the Chinese companies that planned to attend Informex, says that difficulties in obtaining visas cost the companies a total of about $125,000. His colleague Sarah Chen explains that this consists mostly of hotel deposits and air tickets. SOCMA has not yet formally decided to refund the absent companies for the space they had booked.

Missed business opportunities are the biggest cost, Chen adds. American drug companies are increasingly purchasing from Chinese producers to enhance their competitiveness, and Chinese firms are also looking for American products to import. The visa debacle is disheartening for CCPIT employees, who had spent so much time making arrangements and trying to get visas for everyone, she says.

Markus Noll, a professor at the University of Zurich's Institute of Molecular Biology, is exasperated by the new U.S. security measures. Foreign graduate students at the institute, hailing from China and Armenia, canceled plans to attend a genetics conference in Chicago this month when it became obvious that their visas would not be issued in time. Noll adds that the Chinese students, who come from a country where there is no democracy, do not want their names published in C&EN because they fear that U.S. visa-issuing officers will retaliate by denying their future visa applications.

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To reduce the likelihood of terrorists entering the U.S., record numbers of visa applications are being sent to Washington, D.C., for security checks.

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U.S. SCIENTISTS are postponing meetings or holding them outside the U.S. The U.S.'s National Academy of Sciences was forced to postpone a meeting with the Chinese Academy of Sciences from Oct. 10 to Nov. 22 last year because of difficulties that Chinese attendees met in obtaining visas. When the meeting took place, eight of the 24 presenters from the original program were unable to attend. Although 77 individuals had confirmed their attendance originally, only 50 appeared on the rescheduled date. Postponing the event cost the U.S. academy nearly $40,000.

The National Academies now hold meetings with officials of foreign academies outside the U.S., says Wendy White, director of the Board on International Scientific Organizations in the Policy & Global Affairs Division. She says the organization holds several informal meetings annually with counterparts from India, France, China, and other countries.

A chemistry professor at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry is vexed by the cumbersome new requirements that the U.S. has put in place since the autumn of 2001. The professor, who is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a frequent visitor to the U.S., wonders why the U.S. government does not keep a list of foreigners allowed to enter the country without thorough background checks.

White says that the National Academies has offered to help the State Department in setting up such a list. But work is still at a preliminary stage. "The idea of a list of preapproved scientists is a possible solution," she says. But it will not help foreign students much.

White says that it has always been difficult for foreign students to enter the U.S. She explains that all applicants for temporary visas to the U.S. must prove that they have "binding ties" outside the U.S. so that they will not settle permanently on U.S. soil. Students have a particularly hard time proving this because they tend to be single and without a permanent job. The easiest way to deny a visa, she says, is to do so on the basis of weak binding ties.

Denying visas is the safe option for U.S. consular officers overseas. Since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the officials are liable to be punished when a foreigner to whom they issued a visa commits a terrorist act in the U.S. "It could be a career-ending decision if that happens," White says. She adds that visa officers tend to be relatively new to the foreign service and therefore less experienced and less able to determine who may present a threat to the U.S.

To reduce the likelihood of terrorists entering the U.S., record numbers of visa applications are being sent to Washington, D.C., for security checks, White says. Anyone who claims to study high-energy physics or rocket science can face thorough scrutiny because of their possible applications in weapons development. There has been a threefold increase in security checks in the past two years without a corresponding increase in manpower, she says.

SINCE LAST SUMMER, the procedures followed for security checks have become even stricter as part of an ongoing review of visa-issuing procedures since Sept. 11, 2001. In the past, visa applications going through security checks in Washington were sent to agencies such as the FBI, CIA, Department of Energy, or the National Aeronautics & Space Administration for review. The applicant was cleared if the State Department did not receive objections from the agencies within a certain period of time. But now, the agencies consulted by State must explicitly clear or reject applicants.

Another change in procedure is that interventions by U.S.-based scientific organizations or universities that admitted foreign students no longer have an effect on the outcome of individual visa applications or the pace at which they are processed. White says that, in the past, "we were able to intervene and provide more information or clarify."

Applicants from Muslim countries face the most scrutiny, White says. Applicants from countries such as China and India--from which many scientists in the U.S. originate--also face additional attention. There is no concrete evidence that Chinese applicants are facing more scrutiny than Indians, but unlike their Chinese colleagues, exhibitors from India all received visas in a timely fashion for the Informex trade show, McMahon says. Indian academics and businesspeople with extensive ties to the U.S. who were contacted for this article report that they have not experienced new difficulties in entering the country since September 2001. Visitors from Canada and a few other countries enter the U.S. as easily as ever, or almost.

It's obvious to any scientific researcher in the U.S. that foreign-born scholars play a major role in U.S. science. Numbers support this impression. In a presentation last summer, Paula E. Stephan, an economics professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies of Georgia State University, reported that, in 1999, nearly a third of doctorates in science and engineering earned in the U.S. went to students who were temporary residents. In a separate presentation, she reported that about 21% of these doctorates went to Chinese nationals, 14% to Taiwanese, and 12% to students from India.

It is of concern to the U.S. that domestic universities not teach terrorists how to manufacture weapons. In fact, a significant number of science and engineering students are from countries that the U.S. is officially worried about. Between 1990 and 1999, 1,215 science and engineering doctorates, or 2% of the total, were awarded in the U.S. to citizens of countries that are considered to sponsor terrorism, according to Stephan. About three-fourths of these were Iranian. In total, 3.2% of science and engineering degrees awarded in the U.S. between 1981 and 1999 went to citizens of countries targeted for increased security monitoring, a list that includes Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

In a statement released in December, the National Academies said, "To make our nation safer, it is extremely important that our visa policy not only keep out foreigners who intend to do us harm, but also facilitate the acceptance of those who bring us considerable benefit."

The scientific community has been called upon to help fight terrorism. Yet the academies noted in the statement that increased security checks are preventing and deterring much-needed foreign students and foreign scientists--who could assist in the antiterrorism cause, as well as in other important endeavors--from entering the U.S. This is a contradiction that needs to be resolved.

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