Quick US visa on offer to scientists

June 03 2009 by Ranjan Chakraborty

Scientists offered quick US visas

According to a statement from the State Department, US immigration is to reduce the waiting times for science students and scholars who want to gain a visa to study or work in the US.

The screening process for science students, which is intended to check whether visa applicants could pose a threat to national security, can drag on for months and the plan is to now reduce this waiting time to a maximum of two weeks.

The move is expected to be felt particularly in China, where more than half of the screened US visa applicants come from. Some 56,000 science students and scholars were screened for visas in 2008.

The decision to streamline the screening process, known as Visa Mantis, follows calls from Congress to do so to ensure that US immigration benefits fully from the knowledge of foreign science scholars and students.

The pressure previously resulted in the process being reduced from an average of 75 days to 15 days at the end of 2004, but this has since crept back up.

Andy Laine, the spokesman for the State Department, failed to give details of the changes to the process, which were introduced last week, in order to protect security.

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