[IP] Visa policy hinders research from Dallas Morning News

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: brent.hunsaker@earthlink.net
Reply-To: brent.hunsaker@earthlink.net
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 10:12:47 -0800
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: <[IP]> Visa policy hinders research from Dallas Morning News

Wow, 
I do not agree with you Dave. I have my physics degree and it was NASA in
the
1960s that caught my imagination to go for the sciences. The flight of the
Mercury space flights and on through Apollo 11 is what excited me. It was
also
the Science Fiction writers of Asmov and Clark that fired my mind as to the
possibilities. 

What is pushing me out of the engineering field is the extended unemployment
of one to two years every decade or so. I was working in the defense
industry
in the early 1990s when Bush Sr. promissed we would not be cut. Then he cut
the defense spending sending hundreds of thousands of engineers and
scientists
into the streets. I was out of work for over 2 years. I had just recovered
from the financial loss caused ten years ago.

I just lost my job in the telecomm depression. I am tired of being treated
like an asset that can be baught and then discarded.

IEEE just finished an unemployment study showing that the average time an
engineer is unemployed is 48 to 51 weeks at my experence level. That demands
a
huge cash reserve to be maintained just for these times. There goes
retirement.

I am looking to move into law which seems much stabler. A patent lawyer also
make good money and I can do law well past the retirement age in the
electronic industry.

So now you also have a high attrition rate in the field.

I also know many who are in the electronic industry are telling their kids
not
to go there because of being treated poorly.

Even the best and brightest in the industry, like you Dave, are not free of
these problem.

With some many kids from these families coming into the universities now it
is
no wonder so few are stayin away from the hard sciences.

Brent Hunsaker

On Sun, 24 Nov 2002 09:19:13 -0500 Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> wrote:

> I found the following quote to be disturbing.
> 
> "American students tend not to go into the hard
> sciences," he said. "They
> like law, medicine, business and things like
> that. In these kind of
> industries, we've been dependent on foreign
> students for our best
> scientists." 
> 
> Sounds to me like we need to stimulate our
> primary secondary schools to make
> science more exciting and also to change the
> image of science as a place for
> "nerds". But that has been true for years!!
> 
> We may well be on our way to becoming a second
> rate nation with respect to
> technology.
> 
> Dave
> 
> 
> Visa policy hinders research
> 
> 11/24/2002 
> 
> By LINDA K. WERTHEIMER / The Dallas Morning
> News
> 
> America's move to shut the spigot on student
> visas after 9-11 has created a
> brain drain for universities that rely on top
> foreign students to help with
> scientific research.
> 
> Professors, graduate school deans and officials
> from national science
> societies say hundreds of foreign students
> recruited to work on projects in
> such areas as physics, math and petroleum
> engineering were kept out this
> fall because they couldn't get visas.
> 
> Some gave up and went to other countries
> instead.
> 
> "Basically, some research projects are dying,"
> said George McMechan, a
> scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas
> who is missing eight Chinese
> researchers this fall ­ a third of doctoral
> students he admitted. "There
> aren't enough people to work on them."
>  
> Fred Olness, physics department chairman at
> SMU, said most of the program's
> graduate students are from other countries.
> (KIM RITZENTHALER / DMN)
> 
> There is no national count of how many students
> are missing from graduate
> schools, but recent surveys of universities
> indicate few are exempt. In
> Texas, Rice University, Southern Methodist
> University, Texas A&M University
> and the University of Texas are among those
> feeling the effects.
> 
> University and science academy officials, who
> acknowledge the need for
> tightened national security, are pleading with
> the State Department to come
> up with a speedier way to screen visa
> applicants.
> 
> "There has to be a balance between openness in
> the global scientific
> enterprise and protecting ourselves," said
> Jordan Konisky, Rice University's
> vice provost for research and graduate studies.
> 
> Dr. Konisky, a microbiologist, said he
> understands the government's concerns
> about stopping students from taking sensitive
> research information back to
> certain countries.
> 
> "We have to worry about this technology that's
> just flowing back and forth
> across international borders. This threat, no
> one likes it," he said. "But
> we have to have some kind of reasonable
> response."
> 
> A State Department spokesman said the denial
> rate for visas has gone up for
> all categories, not just for students. During
> the 12 months ending Sept. 30,
> 27 percent of applicants were denied, up from
> 23 percent in the previous
> year, said Stuart Patt, spokesman for the U.S.
> Bureau of Consular Affairs.
> 
> "We've heard about the concerns from the
> scientific community, and we are
> looking at how we can accomplish our national
> security responsibilities, and
> at the same time, improve the visa process so
> there won't be undue delays,"
> Mr. Patt said. 
> 
> Stuck in limbo 
> 
> 
> THE EFFECTS OF BLOCKING STUDENTS
> Some examples of how visa problems have
> affected universities:
> ? The number of foreign scholars fell by 8
> percent from fall 2001 to fall
> 2002, according to a survey of 77 universities
> by the Association of
> International Educators.
> ? Physics programs lost 21 percent of foreign
> students they admitted,
> according to 79 universities that responded to
> a survey by the American
> Physical Society.
> ? A consortium of five universities, including
> the University of Texas and
> Texas A&M University, lost about 70 Iranian
> students who were participating
> in an energy exploration partnership with an
> Iranian oil company.
> ? Texas A&M lost 22 of 66 petroleum engineering
> students admitted this year.
> ? Research meetings have suffered because
> international scientists cannot
> get visitor visas.
> ? Texas Christian University's international
> student enrollment fell by 40
> students. Most of the affected students were
> from China, India and the
> Middle East.
> ? A Chinese student returned to his country to
> get married this summer. He
> still is trying to return to his classes at
> Rice University.
> SOURCES: American Physical Society; Association
> of International Educators;
> Dallas Morning News research The affected
> students ­ mostly from China,
> Russia and the Middle East ­ were denied
> admittance to the United States or
> were stuck in the approval process when the
> fall semester began. Many remain
> in limbo. 
> 
> Since the Sept. 11 attacks, all applicants from
> seven countries identified
> as state sponsors of terrorism have had to go
> through extra screening. Some
> applicants from 26 other nations also get
> additional scrutiny, Mr. Patt
> said. The visa process that once took two or
> three weeks now takes three to
> five months. 
> 
> The American Physical Society, a national group
> based in College Park, Md.,
> , surveyed 185 advanced-degree physics programs
> recently. The 79
> universities that responded said 123 of 595
> foreign students admitted for
> this fall had been denied visas.
> 
> That's just a percentage of all students kept
> out this fall.
> 
> A consortium of five universities ­ UT, Texas
> A&M, the University of Kansas,
> the University of Tulsa and Colorado School of
> Mines ­ say they lost about
> 70 Iranian students who were to have come to
> the United States in a
> partnership with an Iranian oil company. UT
> lost all 11 recruits, and Texas
> A&M lost 11 of 14.
> 
> Some of UT's recruits told the university by
> e-mail that they would instead
> attend schools in Norway, England and France,
> said Kamy Sepehrnoori, a UT
> professor and graduate adviser in petroleum
> engineering.
> 
> Thomas Blasingame, the assistant head of
> graduate studies at Texas A&M's
> petroleum engineering department, said the
> students would have helped U.S.
> and Iranian efforts to extract oil and gas.
> 
> In all, Texas A&M lost 22 of 66 petroleum
> engineering students admitted this
> year because of visa issues, he said.
> 
> Dr. McMechan, director for the Center for
> Lithospheric Studies at UTD, said
> his missing Chinese researchers would have
> helped in the search for new oil
> reserves. The center also hunts for oil that
> was missed in existing fields.
> 
> Losing even a few international students can
> damage a program, said Fred
> Olness, chairman of the physics department at
> Southern Methodist University.
> 
> "This year, we got no foreign students," Dr.
> Olness said. "One or two more
> years of this could virtually devastate the
> program."
> 
> SMU physicists are doing research in
> high-energy physics, including
> development of high-speed computer modems for
> the future. The department
> usually has 10 graduate students, most from
> abroad because that's where SMU
> finds top physics students, he said. This year,
> it has just six.
> 
> "I feel like we're losing because we're missing
> the chance to train future
> scientific leaders," Dr. Olness said.
> 
> Chinese concerns 
> 
> 
> SMU is still trying to get 24-year-old Zhiling
> Chen of Beijing. Mr. Chen,
> who has missed the fall semester because of
> visa problems, works in
> high-energy physics, SMU's focus. Reached via
> e-mail, Mr. Chen said he began
> applying for his visa in June. He has gone
> through three interviews and is
> awaiting a fourth in December.
> 
> "I am very disappointed and frustrated," said
> Mr. Chen, whose father earned
> a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology. "I
> really do not understand what the policy is for
> the student visa application
> at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. It breaks the
> dreams of many Chinese
> students about the democratic system in the
> U.S."
> 
> Mr. Patt said the State Department pays special
> attention to Chinese
> applications because of concerns about the
> transfer of technology.
> 
> The Sept. 11 attacks highlighted longtime
> problems monitoring students from
> abroad. Several hijackers got into the United
> States to attend flight
> school. Others were approved for student visas.
> 
> Dr. Konisky, the Rice researcher, said the
> government had little choice but
> to crack down. 
> 
> "We all found ourselves in an impossible
> situation," he said. "The system
> was so broken in terms of tracking. These
> students would come, they wouldn't
> show up at school. Nobody knew where they were.
> Their visas had expired. The
> State Department and the INS  had to
> take serious steps quickly, and they did."
> 
> Still, university officials say, they need
> international students, who staff
> research labs, work as teaching assistants in
> undergraduate classes and act
> as collaborators on research before and after
> they finish their degrees.
> 
> They are recommending solutions to the
> government, including giving more
> resources to federal agencies that screen visa
> applicants.
> 
> Irving Lerch, director of international affairs
> of the physics society, said
> the nation should work to protect the
> investments it has made in the
> sciences. The National Science Foundation gave
> $3.6 billion this year to
> universities for scientific research.
> 
> "The United States sees fit to make a huge
> investment in these
> laboratories," Dr. Lerch said. "The success of
> the labs is tremendously
> dependent on foreign investment and
> collaboration.
> 
> "We have to have some kind of security. Nobody
> is suggesting to throw open
> the borders to anybody who wants to come."
> 
> The government also needs to give consular
> offices better instructions on
> who can be admitted and what areas of science
> are of particular concern,
> said Victor Johnson, an associate executive
> director at the Association of
> International Educators in Washington, D.C.
> 
> "Because the government has not yet defined the
> criteria to describe what
> they're worried about, they're tending to cast
> a very wide net," Dr. Johnson
> said. 
> 
> "Anybody can get caught up in this, from a guy
> majoring in chemistry at UT
> to a world-renowned researcher who wants to
> come to Cal Tech or MIT to
> participate in the frontiers of research in
> physics."
> 
> Dearth of U.S. scholars
> 
> 
> Some educators say the situation highlights
> another large problem that
> exists within the nation's borders: the dearth
> of American students
> qualified to fill research posts.
> 
> "Someday that faucet will be turned off for our
> colleges and universities to
> bring in international students. Maybe it's
> just beginning," said Manuel
> Berriozabal, a University of Texas at San
> Antonio professor who founded an
> engineering program for middle and high school
> students.
> 
> "They're going to be sorry that there was not
> more attention paid to our own
> students and growing our own talent."
> 
> Researchers said they have tried to recruit
> American students with little
> success. 
> 
> At UTD, Dr. McMechan said scholarships for
> American students go unused.
> 
> "American students tend not to go into the hard
> sciences," he said. "They
> like law, medicine, business and things like
> that. In these kind of
> industries, we've been dependent on foreign
> students for our best
> scientists." 
> 
> E-mail lwertheimer@dallasnews.com
> 
> 
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