Visa denied
Tighter visa restrictions are making it harder
for foreign researchers to work in the United States.
What's the effect on science—and scientists?
As with many things that go terribly wrong, it began
with a simple plan.
Elena Casacuberta and her husband, Joan Roig, postdoctoral
researchers in biology labs at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and Harvard University, respectively,
flew to Barcelona in December 2003 for a three-week
holiday visit with their families. At the same time,
they would dutifully renew, at the United States embassy
in Madrid, their one-year visas allowing them to work
and study in America. Then, they’d jet back to
Boston and resume their busy lives.
Casacuberta, in the United States since 2000, and Roig,
since 1998, customarily traveled to Spain once a year.
On past visits, the renewals had gone smoothly, despite
the drastically intensified security measures and new
layers of visa application requirements prompted by
the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
Not this time
Embassy officials told the pair that because their common
occupation—“molecular biologist”—appeared
on a classified Technology Alert List, their passports
and visa applications would be held while Washington
agencies ran their names through an extensive background
check known as “Visas Mantis.” The delay,
they were told, would be about six weeks.
“I tried to explain my work, but the guy had
never heard of Drosophila, and he knew nothing about
biology,” recounts Casacuberta, who studies fruit
fly chromosomes. “I don’t know how they
could assess whether or not I was potentially dangerous.”
Before 9/11, Visas Mantis security reviews in response
to occupations on the Technology Alert List were conducted
at a rate of about 1,000 annually. Today, there are
about 20,000 a year. Established during the Cold War,
the list now contains many broad fields potentially
related to terrorism such as biochemistry, genetic engineering,
artificial intelligence, architecture, and urban land-use
planning.
For Roig, who does basic research on the cell cycle
at Massachusetts General Hospital, the wait stretched
from six to nine weeks. “These are lives of real
people they are playing with,” he says, with more
than a tinge of bitterness. “They should be able
to pay somebody to know what [occupation] is dangerous
and what’s not.”
When Roig finally arrived home, the couple’s
names had been removed from the mailbox at their apartment.
He did what he could to resume a normal schedule in
Boston, and began waiting for his wife. It would be
a long wait.
Scientists needed
Today, the proportion of non-U.S. science students and
scholars in the U.S. is at an historic high. Nearly
60 percent of postdoctoral researchers and almost 50
percent of doctoral staff at the National Institutes
of Health are foreign nationals. At MIT, 36 percent
of graduate students are non-U.S. citizens.
The international influx has helped shore up this nation’s
scientific and engineering workforce, whose oldest contingent,
Sputnik-inspired baby boomers, is near retirement. From
where do their replacements come? Fewer and fewer hail
from the ranks of American students, who in recent years
have tended to shun fields like science in favor of
the perceived quicker rewards in business.
Given the nation’s reliance on international
intellect, there couldn’t be a worse time for
foreign students and scholars to feel unwelcome in America.
Yet there’s a rising tide of resentment and frustration
as international students and scientists find the new,
daunting homeland security restrictions to be barriers
to entering the United States, and sometimes just as
much a problem when trying to return after a short trip
abroad to attend a scientific conference or visit family.
Just ask Casacuberta. Months after her husband returned
to Boston, the MIT researcher remained in a bureaucratic
limbo. Feeling like a character in a Kafka novel, she
called Madrid every day, and every day was told, “nothing
yet,” or “sorry, we have no information.”
Prior to 9/11, a visitor undergoing Visas Mantis checks
was waved through if nothing had been heard back within
two weeks. Now, the embassy must wait for a positive
report from the security check, no matter how long it
takes. Much to her frustration, all Casacuberta could
do was wait.
Help or hindrance?
No one in the research community disputes the need for
heightened security around foreign visitors and access
to technology that could be useful to terrorists. After
all, the pilot who flew a hijacked plane into the Pentagon
on 9/11 entered the U.S. on a student visa.
But many see the rush to implement widespread and often
inefficient security systems as an overreaction, resulting
in unintended but aggravating problems for legitimate
foreign researchers. Overall, the new systems “have
been a major hindrance to the flow of international
knowledge,” according to a statement by the National
Academy of Sciences.
Many complaints involve the Student Exchange Visitor
Information System, SEVIS for short. Rushed into service
by the Department of Homeland Security in response to
the terror attacks, it is designed to track the comings
and goings of about 800,000 foreign students a year,
whose names must be placed in the SEVIS database.
That database “is full of glitches and problems,”
says Marjory Gooding, director of international offices
at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech also
suffers disproportionately from visa snags with the
State Department because of its heavy concentration
in technology, she adds.
As Casacuberta waited in Barcelona, she was forced
to move between the homes of her parents and her husband’s
parents. For a while, she used a small bit of lab space
in the office of her brother, also a scientist. She
wondered if she should have some of her research materials
sent to her in Spain. She spent time appealing by fax
and mail to U.S. officials in Madrid, to her congressman,
and to Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).
She missed her husband of three years. She turned to
technology to maintain her ties to the states, relying
on e-mail and instant messaging. There was always the
phone, but the six-hour time difference between Barcelona
and Boston was a hindrance.
Misunderstandings crept into e-mails with her two undergraduate
students as she tried to direct them from afar. Finally,
others in her lab had to step in to help the students.
“And for my own work, the wait was quite bad,”
she says. In a competitive endeavor like science, says
Casacuberta, a loss of several months can be critical.
The publication of a paper on her chromosome project
will be delayed, for example. The scientist who heads
the lab in which Casacuberta works, Mary Lou Pardue,
was affected. “Indirectly, the objectives for
the NIH grant of Professor Pardue have been delayed,
too,” Casacuberta says. “That will show
up in this year’s report.”
Pardue remained supportive, as did Roig’s supervisor
at Harvard. “They were really supportive all the
time, trying to keep us motivated and calming us down,”
Casacuberta says. “It’s because of them
I was able to hold on so long and not give up my job.”
Tweaking the system
Among the most galling consequences of the new regulations,
according to Gooding at Caltech, is that some foreign
scientists who visit U.S. collaborators frequently “get
checked every
single year,” and some of them “get backed
up for six or eight months because of this.”
For example, a research director with the Institute
of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Science
complained to the NAS that he had applied for a multiple-entry
visa in January 2004 and had received no response by
late July. This was a man who had visited the U.S. several
times a year since 1991. In the new security climate,
he says, “huge delays and uncertainty in getting
United States visas [make it] impossible to set concrete
plans” for longtime international research collaborations
with the United States. In August, the scientist reported
that he finally got his visa—but only for a one-time
entry. Federal agencies are not deaf to the criticism
and complaints. They have taken a variety of steps to
tweak and streamline communication among departments—chiefly
State, Homeland Security, and Justice (the FBI).
Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation
security in the Department of Homeland Security, told
a hearing of the House Committee on Science last February
that the SEVIS response team, since its formation in
August 2003, had
smoothed the way for 8,000 foreign students and scholars
entangled in SEVIS delays. At the same time, he pointed
out, “We identified over 200 individuals posing
as foreign students, and when we called their academic
institutions, they hadn’t heard of them. These
individuals were denied entry into our country.”
In September, the Department of Homeland Security disclosed
plans to extend security clearances beyond a year for
foreign students and scientists.
The logjam may be easing, say observers, but problems
remain. A report by the Government Account-ability Office
found that at American consulates abroad, visa applications
requiring security checks were delayed for an average
of 67 days.
At the National Academy of Sciences, Wendy White says
her office on international programs has fielded 2,000
appeals from students and researchers tangled in visa
bureaucracy. “Up to a few months ago, our average
wait time was five to six months,” she says. “Now
we’re down to two and three months.”
That’s still too long, argue student and educational
organizations, which call for more improvements in the
system.
One tangible effort in that direction is a bill introduced
by U.S. represen-tative Michael Capuano (D-Mass.). The
bill, cosponsored by Congressman Don Manzullo (R-Ill.),
would streamline the Visas Mantis process in several
ways. Among the provisions: refining the Technology
Alert List; improving information-sharing among the
FBI and Departments of State and Homeland Security;
making security clearance good for three years instead
of one; and allowing those who are cleared to have multiple-entry
visas.
In all likelihood, it seems the post-9/11 visa process
will become somewhat more rational, flexible, and easier
to navigate through legislation, if not negotiation.
But the hurdles will remain higher than before.
One foreboding prospect, say American educators and
professional-society officials, is that many foreigners
will opt for training in their own countries or apply
for welcoming spots in Australia, the United Kingdom,
and Europe, countries only too happy to accommodate
them.
“We risk losing some of our most talented scientists
and compromising our country’s position at the
forefront of technology innovation,” Harvard president
Lawrence Summers warned in letters he fired off last
April to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary
of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. Summers pointed to a
survey last spring showing that foreign applications
for graduate study dropped by one-third at 113 U.S.
institutions.
The situation is “extremely complex,” says
White at the National Academy of Sciences. As universities
in many countries are becoming more competitive with
those in the United States, she says, they create more
incentives for students to stay closer to home. “We
don’t know how many people are choosing not to
come to the U.S., and for what reasons,” says
White.
“Are we just seeing a little blip on the radar
screen here, a failure to get a certain number of students
here in 2004? Or is this a generational thing?”
White asks. “If so, you’re turning a lot
of students to other countries, and it’s going
to be hard to get them back.”
And what of the international students already here?
If America is to maintain its scientific prowess, some
must stay in the U.S. to pursue their professional careers.
Casacuberta and Roig won’t be staying. It took
five months for Casacuberta to get her visa stamp. When
she finally made it back to her lab at MIT, it took
her nearly two months to catch up on the backlog that
accumulated during her absence. “Even to look
into a refrigerator and remember which tube you had
been working with five months ago was hard—and
I’m an organized person,” she says.
Casacuberta and her husband plan to look for work in
Spain soon, as they had planned from the beginning.
“I was always the one saying, ‘Maybe we
shouldn’t leave America,’” she says.
“Now, I don’t say that anymore.”
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