Jim Endrizzi, assistant director of International Student Programs, and Marjory Gooding, director of International Scholar Services, fill out a steady stream of documents to help foreign students and scholars get to Caltech.

WELCOME TO CATCH 9/11 ——
Caltech International Students and Scholars Encounter a Grave New World

By Michael Rogers

When Caltech chemistry graduate student Tao Liu went home to China during the last winter break, he went to the U.S. embassy in Beijing expecting little problem securing a visa for his planned return to the United States three weeks later. After all, when he came to Caltech in 2000, it only took a few minutes to get a visa.

But this is the post-9/11 era. At the embassy, Liu was questioned by an official about his research on electron transfer in DNA. Despite Liu’s attempts to explain that his work did not pose a security threat, the official said that his documents would have to be evaluated in Washington, and that he should go home and wait for the embassy to call. Home was about 650 miles away in Wuhan, in central China. So he took the 12-hour train ride there and waited. Two and a half months later, he got the call, but by then, he had already missed six weeks at the Institute.

“It really caused me some trouble and delayed my experiments,” said Liu. “I had planned to have research results by February. Two of the classes I missed are offered once a year, and another is offered only once every other year, so now I won’t be able to take it until 2005. It might delay my getting a PhD by half a year.”

For many of Caltech’s international students and postdocs, securing a visa to study here has always posed its share of challenges. But since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, new restrictions on travel to the United States have made the lives of foreign students and scholars more complicated.

While a U.S. State Department spokesman said that the government is not closing the borders to international students and scholars, he did concede that a new rigorous inspection system is drawing out the review process for visa applications. And because of potential national-security issues, students and scholars involved in technology-related areas face even more scrutiny and delays. As a result, many of Caltech’s international students and postdocs are canceling trips overseas for fear that they won’t be able to return in a timely manner. Caltech administrators and faculty are also waiting to see whether the new regulations will cause international enrollment to decline.

“Post 9/11, a few changes have affected all visa applications, not just student applications,” said Stuart Patt, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs. “One change is that we have increased interagency security reviews for visitors from 26 countries around the world where we have heightened security concerns.” Not surprisingly, many of these countries are in the Middle East. For the seven countries that the State Department classifies as state sponsors of international terrorism—Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, and, for the moment, Iraq—the visa review process is even more rigorous. It can take two to three months for someone from one of these countries to get or renew a visa, Patt said.

Since well before 9/11, the State Department has also been authorizing special visa security reviews for investigators engaged in work that involves technology transfer. Patt said that this seemed to apply to many students from China, further complicating their ability to obtain visas. While Patt said that most interagency checking is completed in two to three weeks, some Caltech students say that they have had a different experience.

Like Liu, other students from China faced visa problems when they tried to return to campus after winter break. One was held up in China for three months and another student is still stranded in Guangzhou Province. And several transfer students from China were not able to get a visa at all.

According to Caltech’s International Student Programs (ISP) office, four transfer students were held up last summer when visa officers questioned why they would leave three years into their studies at top university programs in China. Despite help from Caltech’s congressional representatives and from President Baltimore, ISP was still not able to get the decisions reversed. While there had been visa denials before, Caltech had always been able to get those decisions reversed.

Caltech has more than 550 international students from 68 countries, about 25 percent of its total student population. Of the Institute’s 552 postdoctoral scholars, 312 are foreign nationals. The countries with the highest student representation at Caltech are China, India, Canada, South Korea, and Romania. For postdocs, China, Japan, Germany, Canada, and South Korea are the countries with the highest representation. In addition, there are many other foreign visitors who are working at Caltech at any given time.

“We’ve had people terribly inconvenienced” as they waited in other countries trying to get a visa to come to the United States, said Marjory Gooding, director of Caltech’s international scholar services, which provides the documents that enable foreign postdocs and visitors to work at the Institute. “At any one time, we have two or three people stranded outside the country. Until now, we’ve always been successful at getting people in. We’ve never failed, but I won’t say we never will.”

It used to take no more than one month for consular officials to hear back from investigating agencies in the case of a visa application that required special review. If they didn’t hear back by that time, they’d usually go ahead and issue a visa anyway, Gooding said. Now that officials are waiting for an answer no matter how long it takes, a bureaucratic logjam has developed. “Nobody wants to be the next guy who lets in a hijacker,” Gooding said. “It is not surprising that consular officers are increasingly tentative in visa issuance.”

Nikoo Saber, a postdoctoral scholar in aeronautics and bioengineering, comes from Iran, but while she hasn’t lived there in nearly eight years—having gotten her PhD from the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London—she has had to cancel several overseas trips out of concern that she might not be allowed back into the United States.

“I missed my graduation ceremony in England last year, and have had to skip three international conferences,” she said. Compounding her problem is the fact that Iranians are issued only single-entry visas. “Each time you leave the country, you’re required to get a new visa. I’d either face delays or immigration officials might not grant me reentry to the United States. If you’re midway through your research or a collaborative project, you can’t just leave for a long period of time.”

Since Iran does not have a U.S. embassy or consulate, Arash Kheradvar—a graduate student in bioengineering from Tehran—had to travel last year to the nearest consulate in the United Arab Emirates to apply for a visa. But it took three trips to the Emirates before the visa was approved so that he could come to Caltech. The delays held up his arrival by more than two months.

After his experience in China last winter, Liu said that he won’t risk returning home again until after he gets his PhD, which likely won’t happen until 2005. “I’m an only child,” he said. “It’s hard for my parents to be separated from me for a long time. I’m angry. Students in science and technical areas are having a problem. But we’re not terrorists.”

“It feels strange not to be able to go back and forth easily, ” said Juliette Artru, a postdoctoral scholar in geophysics, who plans on returning to her native France for an extended period of time this summer while she waits for a new visa. But as a credentialed scientist, she pointed out, she probably has more options than the average graduate student in a similar position. “I can always go back to the lab where I got my PhD, borrow some office space and a computer, and work from there while waiting for my visa,” she said.

Those who work closely with international students say that the visa problems are not only affecting students’ peace of mind, but their work as well. “It will impact students if they cannot go home to see their families,” said Mory Gharib, the Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering and chairman of the international students committee of the faculty board. Gharib said that there are about 45 students at Caltech who are restricted to single-entry visas, adding that President Baltimore has encouraged the faculty to reach out to these students.

As for the longer-range impact, Gharib notes that young scientists and engineers who feel that they can’t risk leaving the United States to attend international conferences are missing out on a valuable aspect of the research experience, and one that could be vital to their postgraduate careers. “When you’re a graduate student or postdoc, it’s important to have contact with peers at other institutions” by going to and networking at conferences, said Gharib. “That’s how you make contacts and tell people what you’re doing.”

BUTTING HEADS WITH SEVIS

In January of this year, after several years of preparation, the Immigration and Naturalization Service—now the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services—unveiled the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS)—a national database for tracking foreign students. Colleges and universities nationwide have been advised that data for the more than 500,000 foreign students and scholars enrolled in their institutions must be entered into the system by August. But a Justice Department investigation recently revealed that technical flaws are creating a backlog of visa applications.

Under the previous system, the government passed along much of the responsibility for handling international student documents to the schools. The government issued forms to universities, which would then evaluate students’ academic and financial records and enter the data on the forms. The students themselves would be responsible for taking the documents to the U.S. consulate in their home countries to get their visa. With SEVIS, the government is directly involved in the entire process, but the system seems to be fraught with bugs. The media has reported that documents often get lost electronically. Sometimes they end up at the wrong schools.

“Although Caltech has not experienced the problem,” said Gooding, “several other institutions did find that their immigration documents got sent in error to other institutions in the early days of SEVIS implementation.”

As they scramble to deal with the post-9/11 world of heightened student and scholar oversight, Caltech officials also worry about the impact that new rules and regulations will have on foreign enrollment. If international students know that coming to the Institute means that they may be unable to travel outside the country during the entire period of their studies, they may think twice about coming to the United States.

Sharp Professor of Geology Kerry Sieh, who works with many foreign students, said, “My opinion is that the United States is targeting the wrong group of foreigners and is doing enormous damage to the country’s science infrastructure. Talented foreign scientists are going to other developed countries.”

Whether that scenario will be limited to a few cases this year or be widespread and play out over the longer term is hard to predict. “These are very adventurous people who are willing to do many things to pursue science,” Gooding said. “But we have heard from people who have said that it isn’t worth coming here” in part because of the visa problems.

The visa backlog could also affect visitors. Since some research scholars only come to the Institute for a few weeks, the projects on which they were planning to contribute could be finished by the time they get their visas. Last October, the National Academy of Sciences had to cancel its Chinese-American Frontiers of Science program when visas could not be obtained in time for the 40 young scientists selected to attend by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The NAS recently established with the Center for Strategic and International Studies a Roundtable on Scientific Communication and National Security, in part to address the visa issue. The cochairs are Caltech president David Baltimore and former Institute president and secretary of defense Harold Brown.

Faculty members are also affected by the visa issue, since their research programs could be compromised if a postdoc or graduate student involved in a project is delayed in returning to Caltech or can’t make it back at all. For students or scholars doing theoretical work, being away from Caltech is not a big issue, since they can work and stay in contact with the Institute via computer. But for people doing laboratory or field work, being stranded thousands of miles away becomes a big problem. Gharib said that some faculty might not want these students in their research groups in the first place if they expect problems getting them into the country.

“The situation is so much in flux, no one really knows how to deal with it in an intelligent, rational fashion,” said George Rossman, professor of mineralogy and academic officer in charge of graduate admissions for the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. “Life has gotten very bureaucratic. We’re trying to help and don’t want to abandon students, but if I have an NSF grant that’s providing support for a student who is stuck for four months in India, should I continue supporting that student during that time? The bottom line is that you want to support the student, but at a certain point, if they’re away from the lab or the field, it puts stress on the system. We don’t have a disaster on our hands, but it’s a situation that demands more attention.”

Gooding said that for most foreign students or scholars who have a multiple-entry visa, there should be no problem returning to the United States after a trip. She added that the situation seems to be settling down.

“Getting a visa is taking longer, but at least there’s some predictability,” she said. “You can’t have an upset like 9/11 and expect things to come back quickly to the status quo. Overall, people are getting their visas.” She added that several national organizations are lobbying Washington to try to improve the situation. Gooding sits on a committee of the National Association of Foreign Student Affairs, which she said has formed a working group that is addressing the visa issue and which has already been in contact with the State Department.

“The key is knowledge; getting people to understand what particular areas of science are really about,” Gooding said. “And that isn’t easy.”

In the meantime, Gooding advised any international student or scholar planning a trip outside the United States to check with her office or the International Student Programs office first. She added that they will continue to work hard to solve visa problems for students and postdocs. “We’re pretty tenacious,” said Gooding.