JHA WASHINGTON: A bipartisan group of influential senators on Friday urged the Biden administration to expedite the process of issuing visas to international students, a move likely to benefit thousands of Indians who will be attending their classes this fall. want. In India, for example, in Delhi, only emergency visas are currently being issued by the US embassy, resulting in a large number of Indian students uncertain about their academic future for the next session starting this fall. There are over 100,000 Indian students in the US and they make a significant contribution to the US economy.
We write to express our concerns about the slow pace of processing student visas as we continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, two dozen senators wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken. To welcome international students and scholars in the fall, as are competing countries, we partner with the State Department to provide predictable and consistent consular services, to maximize options for in-person visa interviews by providing discounts and virtual interviews, Visa Request for extension of eligibility relaxation. Authorize staff overtime and increase hiring, and initiate meaningful engagement with external stakeholders and agencies, he said.
We are at a critical point in the academic calendar when international students and scholars must make visa appointments and plan travel to the United States, he added. Senators further said that while some US consulates are reopening, most are still operating at reduced capacity levels and limited access to visa appointments remains. The senators wrote that prospective students cannot be sure whether their visas will be processed in time so that they can travel to the United States to begin their studies. While we appreciate that a national interest exception has been made for international students, timely processing of these visas remains a challenge. International students coming to the United States provide significant and necessary value to the higher education system and our economy, he emphasized. Data from the Association of International Educators shows that over one million international students in US colleges and universities contributed USD 41 billion to the country’s economy during the 2018-2019 academic year. In addition, bringing international students to the United States enriches the educational experience of domestic students that would be more difficult to achieve through online formats. There are also practical barriers to online learning by international students physically outside the United States such as not all countries have reliable electricity or internet access and time zone differences forcing some students to go online for classes in the middle of the night. are required to be present, the senators said.
He said that there are also countries that limit access to certain information or websites, while the US also prohibits sharing of certain information with other countries.
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