Fortress America... or the Amish version of North Korea:
Visa obstacles causing brain drain in the U.S.
Roger Cohen IHT
Friday, May 28, 2004
Globalist
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts The faces in Harvard Yard still offer a pleasing panoply of youthful humanity, every race, nationality, color and creed seemingly represented on perhaps the most hallowed ground of American higher education. But all is not quite as it should be at Harvard University and its president, Lawrence Summers, is aggrieved.
Harvard has suffered, he says, from new visa requirements that are making it increasingly difficult for the college and others across the country to attract top international students. Frustrated by delays and security checks, some of the best applicants are going elsewhere, to universities in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Over time, he believes, the United States will suffer, its short-term security concerns satisfied at the cost of a long-term loss of vitality and innovation.
"We are sacrificing enormous amounts of good will toward America," Summers said, "and doing it among people who will lead other countries in the future. If the visa difficulties are not quickly corrected, this will cast a multidecade shadow."
At Harvard, applications from Chinese students have declined as much as 40 percent for some graduate programs. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences got 48 percent of its applications from international students in 2000, but only 40 percent this year. Where 10,379 foreigners applied to the Harvard Business School last year, only 8,526 did so this year. All nine faculties have noted a drop in international interest.
Ever since the Sept. 11 attack on the United States, the country has been groping for some appropriate balance between security and the openness that has long been a chief source of American dynamism.
Perhaps excesses on the security side of the scale were inevitable given the extent of the trauma of 3,000 lost lives. Certainly, there have been many, starting with the aliens swept up as possible terrorists in 2001 who disappeared for long periods in conditions that were humiliating or worse.
Now it appears urgent for the country's future that a new equilibrium be found.
The pressure on students and scholars has been particularly severe, perhaps because two of the 19 hijackers were in the country on student visas. New visa fees have been instituted; every applicant now faces an interview. There is new vetting of all visa applications in the sciences for possible security sensitivity.
Every Arab and Muslim male is subjected to special checks. The added workload on consular and other officials has been enormous. Because they are overwhelmed, delays are long.
"This has gone too far," said Alea Morelock Cot, the director of the Division of International Education at the University of New Orleans. "Decisions are being made that do not make sense and scare people. The talent and cultural loss is incalculable."
She pointed to the fact that in 2002, 51,179 international students were enrolled in intensive-English programs in the United States, a 38.4 percent decline from the year before. Levels are now 40 to 50 percent below 2001.
Often, such courses are the precursors to applications by international students to American universities, so the drop has long-term significance.
Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, recently vowed that keeping borders secure would not be achieved at the price of creating a fortress America.
"We are doing our utmost to balance the need to protect our citizens with the need to preserve America's accessibility," he wrote last month in The Wall Street Journal.
Heavy investment in a new name-check system was proving effective, he said, noting that 80 percent of visas for students requiring special clearance were now issued within three weeks, where they took an average of two months last year.
It may be that there are some glimmerings of progress, but the mood at universities is bitter.
Educators see no effective State Department or Department of Homeland Security articulation of how to balance America's interest in control with its interest in openness. They see a crippling imbalance between consular resources and ballooning responsibilities. They see millions of 90-second interviews of dubious security value. And they see low-risk international students and researchers subjected to minute scrutiny for entry - and often for re-entry after a brief visit home.
Jiachang Gong, 33, is Chinese and a doctoral student in chemistry at the University of New Orleans. He and his wife, also a student, have infant twin daughters. Last year, they decided to go back to Shanghai for a quick visit to leave the girls with their family. But the sojourn turned into a four-month stay as the formality of reapplying for his F-1 student visa became an agonizing process.
"The situation is getting worse and worse," he said. "America used to be the number-one choice for Chinese students, particularly in science, but now they must look elsewhere."
His little girls are still in China, but he and his wife are afraid that if they return to pick them up, they will not get back into the United States.
Top Chinese students are now looking with new interest at Australia and New Zealand. The number of international students in New Zealand has soared from just over 30,000 in 2001 to more than 100,000 today.
"We are getting the benefits of the closing of America," said Geoff Pearman, a New Zealand university professor.
At Harvard, Summers is determined to increase the number of students going abroad and intensify international contacts. He feels the current gulf between America and the world, rooted in Iraq, is one that must be bridged.
In a letter to Powell last month, he recommended establishing timeframes for the adjudication of student visa applications and appointing a State Department ombudsman to liaise with universities as two ways to bring greater clarity and speed.
"Never was there so much misunderstanding of the United States and by the United States, with respect to the rest of the world," he said. "It is essential that there be exchanges in both directions, but the current visa policy is moving the country in the wrong direction."
Roger Cohen can be reached at rocohen@nytimes.com.
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