The state department is now plagued by angry requests from universities and scientific organization. This is because, there has been a long delay in getting the Visa process cleared for students and post-doctoral researchers coming from foreign countries.
They are all fed up with this delay. The deputy assistant secretary of the state for Consular services stated that they will tackle these problems as soon as possible. But the department is not sure by when they would be able to finish the complete backlog. They have promised to clear regular requests with two weeks from application. Some experts and professors from the American Association for the advancement of Science call these very gratifying when they addressed a conference call last week.
But this problem has been around for the past one year and each time the science and engineering students have applied to seek or renew their visas, it has been delayed for months together. This created a serious problem as the students and researchers were stranded in the country and had no clue whether their visas would be renewed at all or no.
This is not only an issue for the foreign students and researchers but for the American universities as well. This is because they relay on foreign professors to fill in for the programs and commence the classes. Also they add to the innovations in laboratories across America. But difficulties like the delay in the renewal of the visas is discouraging researchers to join American universities.
On the other hand, the researchers feel that the Americans are reluctant to have them there and hence, the visas delay. Therefore, they are now looking for different options in other countries. Also the visas department is sorry about the muck; they are trying their best to solve these issues. But it is going to take a while.