Restoring Science to Its Rightful Place: The Obama Administration Addresses the Visa Issues Plaguing Foreign Life Sciences Researchers
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After months of complaints by university officials and scientific organizations, the US State Department announced on Tuesday that it is taking action to speed up the delay-plagued visa process for foreign graduate students and post-doctoral researchers.
For the past few years, foreign science and engineering graduate students and postdoctoral seeking to obtain or renew visas have routinely experienced long delays sometimes taking as long as several months. The problem became so acute that students and researchers who left the US often found themselves stranded abroad, not knowing when their visas might be approved. Not surprisingly, the delays have caused enormous problems for American universities, which heavily rely on foreign nationals to fill slots in graduate and post-doctoral science and engineering programs. Over the last year or so, visa difficulties having discouraged many scientific organizations from holding meetings in the United States. Some life sciences researchers said the apparent reluctance of the United States to accept them encouraged them to seek work in other countries.
The State Department has hired additional personal to deal with the visa backlog but will not say how long it will take to correct the problem. A state department official indicated that they hope to handle routine visa requests within a two week time frame.
While never officially acknowledged, the Bush Administration intentionally slowed the visa process for foreign researchers to “guard against proliferation of science and technical information.” In other words, the visa backlog was likely intentionally created to prevent foreign drug companies and national scientific agencies from infringing on American intellectual property and patent rights—an ongoing practice that clearly frightened many of the jingoistic officials running the Bush State Department.
However, what the Bush administration failed to understand was that a majority of foreign students who train in the US want to remain here after completion of their studies. The visa backlog and its protectionist intent forced many foreign nationals to forgo their US training and return to their home countries to seek employment. This was beginning to threaten scientific and technical innovation in US laboratories because for the past decade or longer American students have shied away from science and engineering to pursue careers in business and computer science. Ironically, the Bush Administration’s protectionist leanings may have contributed—more than they care to admit—
to the massive job cuts that have taken place at American life sciences companies in the past few years because of availability of a US-trained work forces in countries like India and China. This provides American life sciences companies with reasonable assurances that preclinical and clinical research outsourced to these countries will be conducted according to US standards. Further, it also provides foreign companies with unbridled access to a growing cadre of US-trained scientists that will enable them to compete on a head-to-head basis with American life sciences companies.
Fortunately, the Obama Administration, unlike the previous one, delivers on its promises and appears to be willing to work hard to restore science and technology to its rightful place in American society.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (it may now be possible for many foreign students!)
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For the past decade or so, I have worked as a career counselor at national scientific meetings where I present seminars about resume writing, interviewing techniques and other career related issues. About two years ago, I started to hear about the fierce competition for H-1 and J-1 visas that foreign students must obtain to remain in the US to continue their studies and research. Many of the foreign students that I talked with sounded more like immigration lawyers than graduate students or postdocs—I was amazed at how well informed they were about visa availability and the changes and loopholes in US immigration law that can be exploited to obtain visas.
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