Chill! Visa requirements are in place for a reason
A couple of years ago I was returning to England from a holiday in Turkey when a customs officer at the Newcastle Airport stopped me cold in my tracks. He took issue that my student visa, which made me a legal resident while I was studying for my postgraduate degree, had only two weeks left of validity.
The officer, firm but courteous, told me I should not have left country without renewing the visa or applying for an extension. I told him that I already applied for the extension.
“You made two mistakes,” he said. “One, you left the country with less than two weeks on your visa, and two, you do not have proof that you filed for an extension.”
I was shaken and very nervous. Not because I had done anything illegal, but because I could have been refused entry and sent back to Saudi Arabia with just six months left to submit my thesis for approval. It would have been a disaster since it would have been more difficult to obtain a new visa in Saudi Arabia.
I offered to show the officer my application for an extension in my e-mail account if I could obtain Internet access. He disappeared for about a half-hour and returned. He didn’t explain, but somehow he was satisfied — either by checking with the Home Office or believing my story with my sad face and big shiny puppy eyes — that I was sincere.
It was a scary moment that reminded me how as an international student on a student visa just how vulnerable one can be.
When the United States’ Homeland Security Department announced that it was tightening its procedures to verify student visas, there was the inevitable handwringing from this side of the world that access to the United States would be more difficult in the wake of the Boston bombings. Yet the US is doing exactly what it should have been doing from the beginning. And it can learn a thing or two from the UK.
The London July 7, 2005 bombings and the controversies over the UK’s immigration policies had an impact on its visas policies. The UK tightened its visas requirements after it opened its borders for Eastern Europe immigrants and ran into a few alleged bomb-making plots involving young men on international student visas.
This is not to say that I am a big fan of the UK government with its Big Brother mentality and its draconian methods ranging from bill collecting to its obsession with security video cameras. But like any reasonable person, I’d rather have the bomb-makers remain in their own country and students on legitimate business complete their studies. If that means delays at customs, then so be it.
The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are evidence enough that the US can whip itself into a frenzy after 9/11, but on the home front attitudes among Americans were relatively, if not surprising, easy-going. The FBI apparently did its job to keep domestic and foreign terrorists at bay. The US has a remarkable record of thwarting terrorist attacks on American soil for more than 12 years.
The Boston bombings brought the US to the same point the UK came to after the London attacks. But when you look at what the US is now doing with student visas, there is really no cause for alarm.
The strengthened procedures basically require border agents to verify student visas and have wider access to the Homeland Security Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.
Saudi Arabia has about 70,000 students studying at US universities, at least four times the number than students on American soil before 9/11. All of them are there on legitimate academic business. If they keep the Saudi cultural attache informed about their academic progress and changes in their status, then they can expect never to hear from Homeland Security and never have to sweat out a border agent’s interview.
I learned a less at the Newcastle Airport. Simply keep my T’s crossed and I’s dotted. One can’t be too careful about a visa. If one is careless, they might run into a less forgiving border agent than the one that dealt with me.
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