International Education Matters

A Forum for Issues Pertaining to
Intensive English Programs

The Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange

And

NAFSA: Association of International Educators

Submitted to

Committee on Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
July 10, 2003

Committee on Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
July 10, 2003

The Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange and NAFSA: Association of International Educators appreciate the Government Reform Committee’s interest in our nation’s visa system, and welcome the opportunity to submit testimony for the record on this important issue.

The Alliance and NAFSA believe we want what the Congress and the American people want: a visa system that protects our national security and that provides for predictable, efficient handling of legitimate applications that support our national interests. Our national security requires that our visa system accomplish both of these important tasks.

In public comments and on a new website, the State Department has consistently supported this concept, encapsulated on a new State website with the phrase, ‘Secure Borders, Open Doors’.

Our concern is that at present, the scale appears to be tilted significantly away from the openness side of this necessary balance.

This concern has been echoed high-level administration officials, as well as by distinguished members of Congress. Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged in a March 26 hearing before the Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Subcommittee, “We can’t win the public diplomacy argument if people think they can’t come here...We must be the most welcoming nation we can be…We’ve got to be sensible and find the balance.” When summarizing the problems that have occurred for universities as a result of changes implemented hastily after September 11, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge noted in a speech before the Association of American Universities: “There has been, I think, a notion that we need to do it quickly rather than to do it right…I assure you we're going to try to do a lot better job working with you under the time limits that are imposed to avoid these kinds of problems in the future.”

Our national interest demands that we find the right balance, and so far, it doesn’t appear that we’ve been getting it right.

The trade-off is not between security on the one hand and educational exchanges on the other. In fact, educational and cultural exchange programs have always enhanced our nation’s foreign policy and security objectives. America’s leadership in the global age, and our effectiveness in waging the war on terrorism, depends on the strength of our ties with and knowledge of the world. Far from threatening our security, openness to educational and cultural exchanges is crucial to ensuring that security, by establishing common ground for cooperation between nations and fostering mutual understanding and respect. Clearly, we do not protect our nation’s security by closing our borders; we diminish it. Through our full range of exchange and international education programs, we must continue to welcome future generations of world leaders to the United States. The opportunity to engage with them remains one of our most important foreign policy assets.

We are particularly concerned with the Department of State’s new policy, announced in a worldwide cable May 21 and codified in an interim final regulation published July 7, to strictly limit the waiver of personal appearance for nonimmigrant applicants.

Simply put, the State Department does not have – and cannot realistically look forward to having in the foreseeable future – adequate staff and other resources to take on this burden. Moreover, the new regulation reverses a sensible and long-standing State Department practice of allowing ambassadors and their staffs to make the crucial, on-the-ground judgments about which applicants need to be interviewed.

On May 2, we wrote to Secretaries Powell and Ridge to recommend steps to ensure that the visa screening process was streamlined in time to avoid a recurrence of last year’s crisis when hundreds of students and scholars were unable to enter or return for the fall semester. On June 17, the heads of four leading higher education associations followed with their own letter to Secretary Powell.

That letter, sent by the American Council on Education, the Association of American Universities, the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, and the Council of Graduate Schools. states: “We strongly urge that implementation of the new visa interview requirement be delayed until such time as sufficient resources are available to meet the increased volume of visa interviews, and that it be phased in gradually by country and security risk, rather than all at once.” In its June 23 editorial, the New York Times called these “good suggestions”, and we fully concur. We believe that the State Department cannot do 90 per cent interviewing on a budget that will accommodate 20 per cent interviewing. A strong visa process makes an important contribution to our national security, and it should be funded appropriately.

For the record, we enclose with our statement a copy of the NAFSA/Alliance letter to Secretaries Powell and Ridge, the letter from the four higher education associations to Secretary Powell, and the New York Times editorial.

This summer, before the nearly-mandatory interview policy takes effect on August 1, we have already seen significant delays in visa processing at our posts abroad. The advent of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) has imposed new burdens on consular sections, as well as on exchange sponsors and academic institutions. This has significantly slowed the visa adjudication process this summer, even though the mandated increase in interviewing has not yet taken effect.

The most difficult instance for exchange sponsors has been at our embassy in Moscow. In mid-June, our embassy still had approximately 6500 applications pending for the summer work-travel and camp counselor programs. The embassy is working to clear this backlog, and has publicly committed to having all visa applications adjudicated by July 15. We are hopeful that the embassy will be able to meet this deadline, but recognize that this will not be easy.

These prospective participants represent well over $2 million in revenue for American NGO sponsors, who of course have salary, benefits, and other overhead expenses to meet. In addition, the economic impact on American employers waiting for these students will be severe. A service contractor for Yellowstone National Park, for example, plans to employ some 900 summer work/travel students, including many from Russia. Yellowstone will have a very hard time compensating for a sudden shortfall in seasonal staff.

The summer work/travel program was designed for students exactly like these: students who will benefit (as our nation will) from a first-hand encounter with the United States and the American people, but who cannot afford the cost of an American education. The public dismay in Russia is likely to be significant if a large number of these students never make it through the visa process. Moreover, there is likely to be an unfortunate ripple effect for U.S.-Russia relations: in the future, American employers disappointed this year may not seek or accept Russian students, thus diminishing a significant avenue for building mutual understanding and respect between our two countries.

We will not know the full effect of all these new measures on higher education until this fall, but it is worrisome that in a survey conducted last fall by NAFSA and the Association of American Universities, we found that hundreds of students and scholars were delayed. Respondents indicated numerous consequences occurring due to student visa delays, including classes and other campus jobs left unstaffed, major conferences or important meetings missed, damage to university linkages abroad, and scientific research delayed or stalled.

With delays like this even without interviewing, the American exchange and higher education community is deeply concerned about the impact on exchange programs and academic mobility when mandatory interviewing takes effect August 1. Delays will seriously and adversely affect American higher education, schools, nongovernmental organizations, and businesses that host exchange participants.

And most important, delays will inhibit the programs from serving our broad national interests in building mutual trust, understanding, and respect between Americans and the peoples of the world.

We are grateful for the Department of State’s recent instruction to its consular posts to give priority to student, scholar, and researcher applications, given the approach of the fall semester. We hope this will help more of these applications be processed expeditiously, and thus facilitate the timely arrival of a higher percentage of these students and exchange visitors. We encourage State to use this approach of establishing seasonal priorities in other exchange categories, to alleviate backlogs in traditional periods of high demand.

We are particularly concerned that our embassies around the world will no longer have discretion to make decisions about who must be interviewed. Our professional foreign service, expert in foreign languages and cultures, is charged with analyzing the political, economic, and social climate in countries around the world, and with advancing American interests. Our diplomats are in the best position to assess the need for face-to-face interviews, and traditional State Department practice has recognized that reality.

The new regulation removes this task from those best equipped to perform it, and places the burden on Washington. It is worth noting that a December 2002 report on the visa system by State’s own Inspector General recommended that each U.S. embassy develop a personal appearance waiver program, approved by the ambassador, and that the plan be approved in Washington by the appropriate regional bureau and the Bureau of Consular Affairs.

The Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, responding to the IG report, took issue with this recommendation and insisted that the authority to waive personal appearance be centralized in Washington. That view is now codified in regulation.

In an environment where available consular resources clearly do not match the task at hand, a one-size-fits-all approach to visa adjudication is not likely to serve the nation’s interests. We urge the Committee to direct the State Department to phase in the interview process, concentrating first on those countries and applicants likely to pose the most serious risks.

Many good ideas have been advanced for a visa policy that produces secure borders and open doors. They tend to fall into four major categories: providing adequate resources and managing within them; focusing efforts on those who require special screening; creating a predictable, time-limited visa process; and establishing effective policy guidance from Congress and DHS. We also enclose for the record our compilation of recommendations in these four key areas that would produce a more balanced policy which better serves our national interests.

We thank the Committee for the opportunity to comment.