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.”