Expert: "Extreme Vetting" Will Cause Delays for University Faculty, Students

Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, Apr. 12, 2017- "President Trump has said he wants “extreme vetting” and ideological testing of visa applicants. What will that look like, exactly? As American colleges wait to hear whether accepted applicants will take up their admission offers for the fall, what can they expect students who are coming from other countries to encounter when they apply for visas and when they show up at border security checkpoints at U.S. airports? A lot remains in flux. But here’s what we know so far about what’s changed and what hasn’t, and the likely effects of the government's moves to strengthen screening processes on the ability of American colleges to attract international students. ... Immigration lawyers say that the instructions outlined in the memos, combined with another, less remarked-upon provision of Trump’s March 6 executive order that suspended the visa interview waiver program, could lead to increased backlogs and wait times. Previously, under the interview waiver program, some international students, for example, were able to skip a required in-person interview at the U.S. consulate when it came time to renew their visas. “Generally, it’s going to take longer to get visas under the procedures outlined in the State Department cables,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer and professor of practice at Cornell University. “More people are going to have to be interviewed in the first place, because they have suspended the visa interview waiver program, and the background checks are going to take longer. More security advisory opinions will be required from people, which means that even after a visa interview, the consulates will have to send people’s information off to other posts or to Washington, D.C., for background checks, which will slow down the process.” He added that the time involved in social media checks will leave less time for interviews. In short, Yale-Loehr said, “it’s going to be harder for academics and others to plan how long it will take them to get the visas they need.” Incoming international students, he said, should “apply as soon as possible for their F student visa, since we really do not know how much longer it’s going to take on average to get an F student visa this summer than it has in the past.”"