President's Column
July/August 2004

Visa-Processing Reforms Are Needed to Improve Security and Protect Scientific Collaboration

IEEE-USA recently joined with leading scientific, engineering and higher-education organizations in a statement to federal policymakers urging them to address problems with the nation’s visa-processing system that are adversely affecting international scientific and technical collaborations.

The statement, in part, said: "We strongly support the federal government's efforts to establish new visa policies and procedures to bolster security; however, we believe that some of the new procedures and policies, along with a lack of sufficient resources, have made the visa-issuance process inefficient, lengthy and opaque. We are deeply concerned that this has led to a number of unintended consequences detrimental to science, higher education and the nation."

With heightened security following 9/11, the IEEE (and IEEE-USA) began receiving increased requests from non-U.S. IEEE members for assistance with problems traveling to and from the United States, including:

• Delays in visa processing that make it difficult for IEEE members abroad to participate in U.S.-based conferences.
• Denial of entry visas on various discretionary grounds, often without explanation or opportunity to appeal.
• Decisions by student members in the U.S. not to travel abroad to visit family or participate in international technical conferences because of concerns they might not be allowed to return to school.

These situations are affecting the IEEE's ability to function as a volunteer organization. They have created an incentive to move IEEE technical conferences and standards development activities out of the United States to facilitate international participation, with lost benefits to the U.S. economy. And most importantly, they are contributing to the increasing perception that our nation is a less-attractive destination for scientific and engineering training and research collaborations. This has negative implications for our country and its ability to remain technologically competitive in a global economy.

The General Accounting Office (GAO), at the request of Congress, investigated these problems and released a report earlier this year. The GAO confirmed significant processing delays because of various problems, including a lack of computer-system interoperability used by different federal agencies in the screening process. The GAO report, highlighted in a February hearing of the House Science Committee, recommended that "the Secretary of State, in coordination with the Director of the FBI and the Secretary of Homeland Security, develop and implement a plan to improve the security check process."

We hope these improvements will help increase our homeland security by eliminating incompatible systems and streamlining processes that consume limited resources without adding a discernible security benefit, and by providing visa screeners with the information they need on a timely basis to make informed judgments about scientific and technical visitors. In short, a more efficient system is a more secure system.

One concept not addressed in the statement, but now being discussed in Washington, is creation of a new special visa for foreign scientists and engineers of stature in the research community, who are employed in well-established international research activities, and who need to make multiple visits to the United States for that purpose.

A number of our members have asked me how this statement squares with IEEE-USA’s position on the H-1B non-immigrant visa, which calls for limits and safeguards to ensure that temporary workers are paid prevailing wages and not used to displace U.S. high-tech workers. We view these as two distinct issues. The visa-processing statement relates to improvements needed in the systems for screening of non-immigrant scientific and technical visitors to the United States, such as non-U.S. members seeking to attend U.S.-based IEEE technical conferences. It would not affect the issuance of H-1B visas, or expand the number of H-1B workers permitted to enter the country for employment.

You can read the multi-society statement on-line.

We welcome your feedback on the statement and on other proposals such as special visas for “trusted” scholars. We’d also like to hear about your own visa experiences as you travel in the U.S. and abroad. Send your comments to president@ieeeusa.org.
 

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