John W. Steadman
2004 IEEE-USA President
President's Column, July/August 2004

IEEE-USA recently joined with leading scientific, engineering and

higher-education organizations in a statement to federal policymakers

urging them to address problems with the nation's visa-processing system

that are adversely affecting international scientific and technical

collaborations.

The statement, in part, said: "We strongly support the federal

government's efforts to establish new visa policies and procedures to

bolster security; however, we believe that some of the new procedures and

policies, along with a lack of sufficient resources, have made the

visa-issuance process inefficient, lengthy and opaque. We are deeply

concerned that this has led to a number of unintended consequences

detrimental to science, higher education and the nation."

With heightened security following 9/11, the IEEE (and IEEE-USA)

began receiving increased requests from non-U.S. IEEE members for

assistance with problems traveling to and from the United States,

including:

? Delays in visa processing that make it difficult for IEEE members

abroad to participate in U.S.-based conferences.

? Denial of entry visas on various discretionary grounds, often without

explanation or opportunity to appeal.

? Decisions by student members in the U.S. not to travel abroad to

visit family or participate in international technical conferences because

of concerns they might not be allowed to return to school.

These situations are affecting the IEEE's ability to function as a

volunteer organization. They have created an incentive to move IEEE

technical conferences and standards development activities out of the

United States to facilitate international participation, with lost benefits

to the U.S. economy. And most importantly, they are contributing to the

increasing perception that our nation is a less-attractive destination for

scientific and engineering training and research collaborations. This has

negative implications for our country and its ability to remain

technologically competitive in a global economy.

The General Accounting Office (GAO), at the request of Congress,

investigated these problems and released a report earlier this year:

https://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04371.pdf. The GAO confirmed significant

processing delays because of various problems, including a lack of

computer-system interoperability used by different federal agencies in the

screening process. The GAO report, highlighted in a February hearing of the

House Science Committee, recommended that "the Secretary of State, in

coordination with the Director of the FBI and the Secretary of Homeland

Security, develop and implement a plan to improve the security check

process."

We hope these improvements will help increase our homeland security

by eliminating incompatible systems and streamlining processes that consume

limited resources without adding a discernible security benefit, and by

providing visa screeners with the information they need on a timely basis

to make informed judgments about scientific and technical visitors. In

short, a more efficient system is a more secure system.

One concept not addressed in the statement, but now being discussed

in Washington, is creation of a new special visa for foreign scientists and

engineers of stature in the research community, who are employed in

well-established international research activities, and who need to make

multiple visits to the United States for that purpose.

A number of our members have asked me how this statement squares with

IEEE-USA's position on the H-1B non-immigrant visa, which calls for limits

and safeguards to ensure that temporary workers are paid prevailing wages

and not used to displace U.S. high-tech workers. We view these as two

distinct issues. The visa-processing statement relates to improvements

needed in the systems for screening of non-immigrant scientific and

technical visitors to the United States, such as non-U.S. members seeking

to attend U.S.-based IEEE technical conferences. It would not affect the

issuance of H-1B visas, or expand the number of H-1B workers permitted to

enter the country for employment.

You can read the multi-society statement on-line at:

https://www.ieeeusa.org/forum/POLICY/2004/051204.pdf.

We welcome your feedback on the statement and on other proposals such

as special visas for "trusted" scholars. We'd also like to hear about your

own visa experiences as you travel in the U.S. and abroad. Send your

comments to president@ieeeusa.org.

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