International Education Matters

A Forum for Issues Pertaining to
Intensive English Programs

"Visa misery pushes US into slump"
by Jackie Winspear
April 7, 2003

The American English language industry accused its government of heaping further misery on the struggling sector after enforcing new regulations that make it even tougher for foreigners to get student visas.

William Fish, president of the Washington International Education Council, an organization which promotes US education, said: 'International Education faces the worst crisis in the USA that it has ever faced.

The administration speaks well of international education, but is doing everything to hinder it.'

The US State Department told its embassies worldwide at the end of May that they must enforce new rules requiring all applicants for 'non-immigrant' visas to attend an interview with a consular official. The measures are part of a drive to reduce the threat of terrorism inside the US.

The decision came as the English language industry revealed a dramatic slowdown in business. A survey of intensive language courses showed a 19 per cent slump in business in the year to 1 May and predicted summer enrolments to fall by at least 30 per cent compared with a year ago.

Overseas students are thought to be choosing other English speaking countries, including Canada. Even with the Sars outbreak, it is seen as the biggest threat to the US industry and recently increased the time that foreigners can study without a visa from three to six months. The American Association of Intensive English Programmes, which conducted the survey with the Institute of International Education, predicts widespread job losses and the closure of many ESL courses, with smaller schools the first to be hit.

Peter Thomas, director of international programmes at the University of California, San Diego Extension, strongly criticized the State Department policy. 'This is definitely a crisis situation. The State Department cable says that all non-immigrant processing should move to interviews, and already Berne in Switzerland - hardly a terrorist threat - has a six-week backlog.'

Thomas cited other countries such as Spain where many applicants have to travel hundreds of miles to the capital to be interviewed. Media reports in Taiwan, India, the Czech Republic and other EFL markets warned their citizens to expect long delays.

Randy Johnson, a senior executive at the US Chamber of Commerce, said: 'This is probably going to add a lot more time to the process and could bog the system down very seriously.'

Kelly Franklin, president of AAIEP, said the industry's concerns were being ignored. 'The State Department assumes that everyone's college-bound, that they've planned a year in advance. English language students often decide a month ahead of time to travel, which doesn't leave time to get a visa.'

She also said that the new Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, which requires all international students to be registered in a monitoring programme 'is not working'.