A recent report from the Government Accountability Office found that the wait time for international students to receive their travel visas to study in the United States has decreased dramatically over the past year.
This study, which examines the time it takes for visa stamps and background checks for students to be processed through the Visas Mantis program, found that the average wait for students to gain clearance has dropped from 67 days to 15 days in the past year.
"This will definitely have an impact on the ability of [international] students to travel home, and more people will be able to study here," International Student and Scholar Adviser Lisa Felix said.
The GAO report stated that the dramatic reduction in the processing time for these Mantis cases is due to added staff at the State Department and the implementation of an electronic tracking system for these cases. In addition, the FBI is no longer involved in the background checks for each case, which lessens the time it takes to award students their visas.
Felix said that in the past, some international students would apply for the visa stamp and it would sometimes take up to a year for it to be processed.
"When people start to hear stories like that, they say, 'I'm not going anywhere,'" Felix said.
Many students have witnessed these dramatic effects firsthand.
"Some of my friends at other schools who were studying things like biology and physics got visa-checked for over a year in China," School of Arts and Sciences graduate student Isabelle Chen said. "It seems like what they are studying has an effect on getting visas, also."
Most of the delayed visa checks are required for students studying in various scientific fields. These checks date back to 1998, when the Visas Mantis program was first created, although the real security problems did not arise until after September 11, 2001 -- when the State Department started to more strictly enforce the rules of the program.
Graduate student unions across the country have been focusing their efforts on making it easier for international students to obtain visas and speeding up the security checks.
"I think this is very good news for international students, and a large part of it is a result of graduate student lobbying, especially the Yale group," Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania co-Chairman Joe Drury said, referencing Yale's Graduate Employees and Students Organization.
"This didn't happen from benevolence. It is from international students telling people what they need," Drury added.
Director of International Student and Scholar Services at the Office of International Programs Shalini Bhutani believes that the situation for international students has changed dramatically.
"A great deal has been done in the last year," Bhutani said.
Bhutani attributes the improvement to the national momentum that the issue has gained recently. She cited a statement released by Colin Powell last July, which emphasized the need to process international visas quickly, as helping the cause.
"No one wants to get in the way of international study," Felix said, "and the State Department has been improving to keep this from happening."
