Latitudes

State Dept. says it is cutting wait times for student visas

The U.S. Department of State is prioritizing the issuance of student visas, Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, told Congress.

Testifying last week before a House appropriations subcommittee, Blinken said visas for international students and other categories of travelers with significant economic impact, like people coming to the United States for business, were being moved to the front of the line. “They’ve been the priority,” he said.

The issuance of visas, passports, and other travel-related documents slowed markedly during the Covid-19 pandemic, when consulates were shuttered and international borders were closed. Personnel who handled such paperwork were reassigned and contractors were laid off, Blinken said.

Now, as global travel has resumed, the State Department has had to scramble to fully restart these services. “We’re surging our resources” into consular work, Blinken said. He noted that the department had actually issued 18 percent more visas in the first five months of the 2023 fiscal year than during the same period in 2019.

Worldwide, wait times for student-visa interviews are currently a month or less at about 70 percent of American consulates, according to visa information posted by the State Department. But roughly two dozen consulates report major delays, with waits for interview slots stretching two months or more. Among that group are several consulates in India, which is second to China in the number of students in the United States.

The real test, however, is likely to come in the summer months, when, on average, seven out of 10 new international students apply for visas. Between last May and August, the State Department issued 84,000 visas to Indian students alone — and international-education experts anticipate that Indian interest in an American education will only grow this year.

Last year, waits for visa appointments in Mumbai and New Delhi at times stretched to 14 months. While students can apply for emergency appointments as their departure dates for the United States near, college officials remain concerned that backlogs at popular consulates could cause some students to miss their program start dates. In India, some companies even claim to sell coveted visa-appointment slots to anxious students.

Meanwhile, Americans applying for passports to go abroad are encountering huge backlogs. Blinken said the State Department is receiving an “unprecedented” 500,000 passport applications a week, an increase of 30 to 40 percent over last year. Processing times stretch 10 to 13 weeks, on average, and even expedited applications can take seven to nine weeks, he said.

The long wait times could complicate planning for students interested in study abroad.

In other visa-related news, the State Department will raise student-visa and other consular fees, but the increases will not be as large as originally proposed.

Visa-application-processing fees will increase by 16 percent, to $185, according to a final rule published on Tuesday in the Federal Register. The State Department had initially put forward a larger increase, raising fees to $245, but revised that amount after resistance, particularly from higher-education groups, during a public-comment period. College groups were concerned about the impact of the larger hike on international students, the department noted in a summary of the public response.

The department has said the fee increases were needed to meet the costs of visa processing, noting in a news release that most processing charges had not changed since 2012. The new fees will go into effect on May 30.

Also on Tuesday, the State Department announced that it would permit program sponsors to digitally sign and electronically submit visa-related documents for participants in international academic- and cultural-exchange programs.

Student activism isn’t always protected, global report finds

Students are speaking out and protesting for causes they believe in, yet they can be overlooked in discussions of academic freedom, according to a new report on global student activism.

The report, published by the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund, concludes that protections for student activists are insufficient. In some places, authoritarian governments have sought to limit student dissent, and even advocates of academic freedom may focus more on teaching and research than on student speech.

The report documents instances of repression, including security raids against anti-government protesters on a university campus in Iran, the death of a detained student in Myanmar, and surveillance of Chinese students abroad. Student activism must be better documented and needs more surefire protections, it concludes.

Undocumented, and with an uncertain future

Growing up in South Carolina, Steven rooted for Clemson University’s football team and dreamed of going there for college.

His guidance counselor broke the news to him: A 2008 South Carolina law bans undocumented students from enrolling at the state’s public colleges, one of three states with such a prohibition. For Steven, a high-school senior who came to the United States from Mexico with his parents before his first birthday, Clemson was off limits. (The Chronicle is identifying Steven only by his first name because of his immigration status.)

What’s more, he doesn’t have the legal protections afforded by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, because the government stopped processing new applications to the federal program after then-President Donald J. Trump sought to end it in 2017. As my colleague Marcela Rodrigues writes, more and more undocumented college-age students could be in Steven’s position, their futures in limbo. You can read her story here.

Meanwhile, a bill introduced in the Nevada legislature would allow undocumented students with federally recognized deferred-action status who have lived in the state for at least 12 months to qualify for lower resident-tuition rates.

Around the globe

In an interview, Nikki Haley, a Republican candidate for president, said the United States should reform its immigration system to retain more talented international graduates of American colleges.

A federal judge said the U.S. Department of Education “likely acted outside of its statutory authority” when it did not credit native or heritage speakers of a foreign language applying for a Fulbright-Hays award for research abroad with language proficiency. The department announced it plans to change the Fulbright-Hays rule, which is the subject of a lawsuit by graduate students who said they were penalized by the policy.

Final Common App data for the current admissions cycle shows a strong rebound among international undergraduates, with the largest number of overseas applicants from China, India, Ghana, Nigeria, and Canada. Is application growth from Africa a sign that the continent could be the next big thing in international admissions?

The federal government’s investigations of researchers’ ties with China has “destroyed careers” and “eroded trust” in the government across the scientific community, H. Holden Thorp, editor in chief of the Science family of journals and a former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writes.

The Canadian government announced it would grant 18-month extensions to international students whose post-graduation work permits are about to expire.

Some Indian students in Canada could face deportation for visa fraud in a case in which they allegedly used fake college-acceptance letters to apply for study permits.

A Russian college student was prosecuted for terrorism over social-media posts questioning the war in Ukraine. Facing a prison term, she fled the country.

China’s college students will graduate into an economy battered by Covid lockdowns and regulatory crackdowns.

Universities in Beijing are set to award degrees to more graduate students than undergraduates this year, a city education official said.

Mainland Chinese students in Taiwan are dwindling, the result of a 2020 ban by the Chinese government on new degree applicants to Taiwanese universities amid geopolitical tensions.

Japan hopes to attract 400,000 international students and send 500,000 of its own students abroad, as part of ambitious 10-year goals announced by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Miss our Chronicle virtual forum on globalizing the classroom? (It was excellent.) You can still watch it on demand.

And finally …

The March Madness college-basketball tournament each year attracts scores of fans who tune in for the dynasties and the Cindarellas, the hoops and the heartbreak. This year they have come from as far away as Serbia, thanks to a U.S. State Department sports-exchange program that brought more than a dozen Serbian women’s and girls’ coaches to America to talk about mental health, inclusivity in sports, and Title IX, the landmark law that guarantees an equal playing field regardless of gender. The coaches will wrap up their sports-diplomacy trip at the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association Conference, on the sidelines of the women’s Final Four.

Thanks for reading. I always welcome your feedback and ideas for future reporting, so drop me a line at karin.fischer@chronicle.com. You can also connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you like this newsletter, please share it with colleagues and friends. They can sign up here.