Stanford’s 40 Iranian graduate students and postdocs are a tenacious lot. As citizens of one of seven countries identified by the U.S. government as state sponsors of terrorism, they not only had to travel outside of Iran to get student visas—to Syria, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere—but also had to undergo background checks. Now, because of an April amendment to Immigration and Naturalization Service policy, if they leave the United States for more than 30 days, there is no guarantee they’ll be able to re-enter.
Reza Navid, a graduate student in electrical engineering who was scheduled to present a paper in Japan in September and then visit his home in Tehran, won’t be making the trip after all. Officials in Toronto recently told him they couldn’t process his visa renewal, as they had in previous years, and he says the risk is too great to leave the United States. “Most of my friends in the Persian community think we are stuck here,” says Navid, who estimates it will take him another five years to finish his degree.
Additional changes are in the works for international students (“Rallying Together,” Farm Report, March/April). President George W. Bush signed a directive in May to establish an interagency panel to set policies for examining foreign students’ fields of study, and he also has proposed that visas be issued by the Department of Homeland Security rather than the State Department.
