Iranian Students: Can they be a Threat?

It was Summer1999 when I came across Ali and his wife. I met them at US Embassy in Ankara while shivering physically from cold and mentally from the thought of what will happen to me within a few seconds. Ali started the conversation by looking at my shaking hands and uneasy movements. He wanted to calm me down. He had an admission for Nuclear Physics PhD. He was married and they were both brilliantly very optimist about getting visa and were giving me hope.

It took somehow long, may be half an hour till I returned to my seat with a blank mind, a pile of documents and a passport with a reject stamp in it. I cannot remember how I got out of the embassy and found myself in the arms of my mum. The only support of my life that was always there with me, with a sweet smile and the calm eyes at the worst times. I was breathless with tears, could not even talk. Ali and his wife came and it was them who told my mum what happened. The consul had rejected my student visa.

Ali sat and there came his history in his passport: 7 reject stamps in different parts of the world during four years. Even one was an admission stamp and then he had been rejected at the time of clearance after having stayed in India for six months to get the 30 days clearance!

My mouth was agape!

We kept in touch and the last news was that he sold his father’s only house and toured Europe to get visa and he was rejected all because of his field of study. US would not let an Iranian to come and study Nuclear Physics in States. It was in conflict with national security measures. It was a documented law then at 1999.

Now that US authority have raised this case after Sep. 11:

“A presidential directive on "Combating Terrorism Through Immigration Policies," issued in late October, called for stricter controls on student visas, and barring "certain international students from receiving education and training in sensitive areas, including areas of study with direct application to the development and use of weapons of mass destruction.”

I can say I have witnessed that this law and the security measures were effective for Iranian students long before Sep.11 tragedy. This has been nothing new for us as we had all to go through a lengthy FBI clearance check before the visa could be issued. There are cases that after the grant of visa, their studies have been delayed for a semester, as the visa could not be issued before the FBI clearance.

The point is that even Iranians students cannot be major threat as they have all gone through this screening system. Also, looking at the available profiles of the students in American universities, you can see that Iranians students are mostly in Engineering, doing graduate level studies in the same major they have got their original admission for. The reason is that they get admission in the same field that their Undergrad studies has been. As an Iranian with the current economic situation in Iran, students are not able to switch between different courses especially fancy ones as Liberal Arts. %98 if not more can not support the higher education in US financially and they rely on University teaching assistantship and research assistantships. Obviously with the existing competition to get these assistantships, Iranian students have to stick to their major. With limited financial ability in a foreign land, you can not have that much flexibility to do what you dream of!

So, this can almost hardly happen for an Iranian student:

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the Office of Homeland Security, said the Immigration and Naturalization Service would not only screen visa applicants more carefully, but also would monitor their courses of study once they enter the country. If students who had said they would study liberal arts, for example, start taking courses in nuclear engineering, "that's something that will raise a red flag, and we'll go and take a look at them," Mr. Johndroe said.

But yet after all being said and done, is it fair that the Iranian student who has passed all these meticulous screenings is denied the right of going back to his home land for a visit or even never be granted the chance of studying in US if this new law is passed? Will this really reduce the risk of terrorist attacks? I personally doubt highly!