An Iranian Student’s Visa Was Voided on His Way to America. He Still Doesn’t Know Why.

There was a lot of crying at the airport.

Like other Iranian students, Peyman Rashidi had only a single-entry visa to go to the United States, meaning that he wouldn’t be able to return home until he finished his doctorate. At least five years, he estimated. So his parents and his friends all came to the airport to send him off to the University of California at San Diego. It would be goodbye for a long time.

Instead, Rashidi was blocked from boarding his connecting flight in Qatar and his visa was revoked. “Cancelled” was scrawled across it in pen. Rather than starting classes and research projects — Rashidi’s focus is on artificial intelligence and machine learning — he is now back home in Tehran, trying to figure out what happened.

Rashidi’s case is not isolated. He is one of at least a dozen Iranian students in computer science and engineering, most heading for campuses in the University of California system, whose visas were voided at the last minute. They are part of a broader spate of incidents in which international students, including some from China and the Palestinian territories, were prevented from entering the United States.

To be sure, most of the one million overseas students on American campuses began the academic year without issue. Still, the recent revocations, which happened without warning or explanation, are raising alarm within higher education.

There is concern that the uncertain climate for international students could damage American universities’ global reputation and undercut their competitive edge. Those worries are especially acute at the graduate level. Nearly a third of all doctorates awarded by American universities go to international students, and in some science and engineering fields, a majority of graduate students come from abroad.

In San Diego’s department of electrical and computer engineering, where a second Iranian student’s visa was also revoked, approximately 80 percent of master’s students and three-quarters of doctoral students are foreign-born.

Both of Rashidi’s parents are engineers, and he grew up tagging along to his father’s civil-engineering projects. (The Chronicle is referring to Rashidi by his first name and his mother’s maiden name because he is concerned that speaking publicly about his experience could jeopardize his chances of getting another visa.)

For Rashidi, who is 23, his first choice was to go to the United States to study computer and electrical engineering. “All the best professors, all the cutting-edge researchers in my field, are in the U.S.,” he says. When San Diego, a top-ranked engineering school, offered him a prestigious fellowship, covering tuition and a stipend, it was a “dream.”

Extensive Screening

Rashidi began the work of securing his student visa after graduating from the Sharif University of Technology, in February. Under the Trump administration’s travel ban, most Iranian citizens cannot enter the United States, but the final version of the executive order carved out a special exemption for those on student visas. Because the U.S. government doesn’t have official relations with Iran, visa applicants must travel to a consulate in a neighboring country; Rashidi went to Armenia.

Iranian students must go through an extensive, often onerous screening known as “administrative processing,” in which applicants’ information is reviewed by multiple intelligence agencies. As Rashidi saw it, the months of vetting were baked into the application, part of the price of admission to study in America. He got his visa on August 22, about two weeks before he was to leave for California.

Even as he packed for his move, Rashidi began to hear rumors. Sharif is Iran’s MIT, and many of its top science and engineering students go abroad for graduate study. Some of those heading to the United States were being turned back, he heard, their visas canceled.

Rashidi had received no notification of a change in his visa status from the U.S. government. When he went to the airport, his paperwork was in order; he would not have any problems, he was reassured.

Until he got to his connecting flight in Qatar. At the gate, he was pulled out of the passport-check line and sharply questioned by a man who, he says, identified himself as a U.S. customs official. “Where are you going?” the man asked him. “What are you studying?”

When he asked for an explanation of why he was suddenly being scrutinized, Rashidi says the man told him, “You are not entering that plane, period.” He then took out a pen and wrote “cancelled” in capital letters and drew a line through Rashidi’s visa.

Rashidi had to buy his ticket back to Tehran. Weeks later, he still doesn’t know why he had been stopped. In Qatar he was instructed to talk with the U.S. embassy, but State Department officials told him they don’t know why his visa had been denied and expressed “sympathy” for his situation, he says. (While the State Department issues visas, it is the Department of Homeland Security that decides whether to admit visitors to the country.)

U.S. government officials have not commented on Rashidi’s case or on the cases of other international students whose visas have been revoked. While the Trump administration has invoked national security as a reason for heightened scrutiny of international students, Rashidi says his area of research is largely theoretical. “The most sensitive device I use is pen and paper,” he says.

“Maybe the political situation is not good, and maybe the U.S. government doesn’t want Iranians in the U.S.,” he says, “but tell them before they get on the flight and their visa is revoked.”

‘It’s Us Going Backward’

Tara Javidi, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at San Diego, calls the current unpredictability around student visas troubling. The last-minute revocations are just the latest difficulty her students have encountered, she says. Those coming from China now face strict limits on visa validity, which prevent them from traveling abroad for research or even to visit their families. Applicants from around the world have been hit with lengthy delays in visa processing.

In the short term, San Diego will miss out on two incoming researchers, as it’s too late to recruit other graduate students to take their place this year. But in the long term, given the obstacles, Javidi worries that students will decide against “putting a bet” on an American degree.

“Attracting a diverse group of students from around the world is what makes U.S. higher education unique, and it’s what contributes to our research success,” says Javidi, who, like Rashidi, is Iranian. Engineering programs in Europe are only now beginning to recruit heavily from abroad, she says. “It’s us going backward, while they’re going forward.”

A new report released on Tuesday by the Council of Graduate Schools shows that first-time enrollments of international students in American engineering programs declined 8.3 percent in the past year. Over all, the number of new graduate students from abroad fell 1.3 percent in the fall of 2018.

Like Rashidi, the other San Diego student whose visa was revoked was a top recruit. (“The joke among faculty,” Javidi says, “is that none of us would have been able to win a fellowship from our own program.”) Professors have reached out to him, but Javidi says he has decided “completely against” studying in the United States. “It sounds like he is too disappointed.”

For his part, Rashidi has deferred his admission. When he recently traveled back to the U.S. embassy in Armenia to reapply for a visa, he was held by border officials for several hours. “When they see ‘cancelled’ written in pen, they think you’ve done something bad that your visa was canceled in this manner,” he says.

He knows there’s no guarantee that he will get another visa, no guarantee that it won’t be revoked again. While the United States remains his first choice, he was also accepted by Canadian universities. Whatever path he follows, he, frustratingly, will have fallen behind in his studies.

“I’m depressed,” Rashidi says. “I understand there are lots of ups and downs in life, but I’m angry because I studied very hard to reach this point.”

Karin Fischer writes about international education, colleges and the economy, and other issues. She’s on Twitter @karinfischer, and her email address is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.