U.S. student visas are denied by different rates, depending on region of the world
More than half of all applications for U.S. visas from African students were denied in 2022, part of a yearslong pattern of sky-high refusal rates in a part of the world seen by many as the next big thing in international admissions.
A new analysis of U.S. Department of State student-visa data shows significant differences in denial rates by region. In Europe, fewer than 10 percent of applications are typically rejected. But in Africa, denial rates for student visas, known as F-1s, have been at or near 50 percent across the eight-year period studied, the 2015 to 2022 fiscal years.
“These disparate outcomes call for sustained, serious investigation,” said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonprofit group that advocates for international-student-friendly policies. The alliance published the data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, in partnership with Shorelight, an international-education company.
Overall denial rates for U.S. student visas spiked in 2022 around the globe, with one in three F-1 applications rejected — a development the State Department has attributed to “unprecedented demand” as international study resumed following Covid-19.
The Shorelight-Presidents’ Alliance analysis is the first to disaggregate visa rejections by region, and it shows some consistent trend lines over time, regardless of the pandemic or of presidential administration, said Rajika Bhandari, a senior adviser to the alliance and an author of the report. While denial rates did increase under President Donald J. Trump, who pushed for more-restrictive visa policies, the regional disparities were evident across the three administrations represented in the data.
In addition to Africa, Asia — in particular, Southern Asian countries like India, Nepal, and Pakistan — have had higher F-1 rejection rates. In 2022, 36 percent of applications from Asian students were denied.
Still, the 54-percent rejection rate for African students is an order of magnitude greater. The report estimates that some 92,000 visas were denied over the period studied. (Denial figures include an unknown number of applicants who successfully reapplied and were granted visas.)
“This report refutes the notion that these are isolated incidents,” Bhandari said.
In a written response to Chronicle questions, a State Department spokesperson said that student visas are adjudicated on a case-by-case basis and that, worldwide, most students receive visas after their first application.
In 2022, nearly 31,000 visas were issued to students from African countries, significantly more than in any of the previous five years, the spokesperson noted. In the current fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2022, more than 5,200 F-1 visas have been issued so far to Nigerian applicants alone.
Quoting Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state, the spokesperson called facilitating the presence of foreign students on American campuses a “foreign-policy imperative.”
“International student mobility is central to diplomacy, innovation, economic prosperity, and national security.”
The high number of denials in Africa is especially troubling because the continent has been seen by many educators as a promising new source of international students as enrollments from China, long the top sender of students to the United States, decline. With the number of domestic students also contracting, tuition dollars from abroad are even more critical to American colleges.
Sixty percent of Africa’s 1.25 billion residents are under age 25. Because of an insufficient number of local universities to meet the growing demand, more students from Africa travel internationally to earn a degree than from anywhere else in the world.
Despite that potential, American colleges may think twice about building up their recruitment capacity in Africa if the returns on that investment, in actual enrolled students, are poor. In China, by contrast, visa-denial rates were 15 percent or lower in all but one of the past eight years. In 2022, nine out of 10 Chinese student-visa applications were approved.
Denials could also discourage African students from applying to the United States.
One Nigerian student, now in a master’s program in computer science at a public university in a Southeastern state, said he had to apply three times before finally getting a visa. When he received his first rejection, after a brief, two-minute interview, he said he felt enormous disappointment. “I felt like all my efforts went right down the drain.”
Still, the student, who asked that he not be named because of his student-visa status, said he was determined to study in the United States because of the quality of education here, particularly in artificial intelligence, his area of interest. “I’m the kind of person who will keep going until I hear yes,” he said.
West African countries like Nigeria had the highest denial rates within Africa, 71 percent in 2022. But even within the continent, rejection rates varied widely — the lowest, of 16 percent, were in Southern Africa.
High denial rates are no surprise to Imran Vaghoo, an independent college counselor in Kenya. He’s part of several local international-student Facebook groups and said many prospective students are ill prepared for visa interviews by consular officials. In addition, some applicants seek student visas as a backdoor way to come to the United States because of the difficulty of getting an immigrant visa. Bad actors “create problems for all students,” Vaghoo said.
But Stephen Appiah-Padi, director of global and off-campus education at Bucknell University, said such incidents shouldn’t lead to rejections of qualified students. If there are issues, said Appiah-Padi, who came to America as an international student from Ghana, “we must be creative in solving that problem rather than punishing students.”
