#12 - RW 264
Moscow Times
July 14, 2003
Fewer Students Go to U.S. This Year
By Robin Munro
Staff Writer

Despite expectations of significant growth, the number of university students going to the United States to work for the summer or sightsee is shaping up to be hundreds fewer this year due to late and improperly filled out visa applications, the U.S. Embassy said.

A record 8,000 students visited the United States last summer, and then-U.S. Consul General James Warlick said in May that he expected 10,000 to go this year. But it looks like the actual number will end up being closer to 7,000, the embassy said.

Kim Marie Gendin, second secretary at the embassy, said Friday that student exchange programs were asked to file their applications no later than April 1 so that the embassy would have enough time to process them under the slower and more stringent system it introduced after Sept. 11, 2001.

But no applications were received by that deadline from the 24 exchange program agencies accredited with the embassy, she said.

An extension was granted until June 17, and the embassy promised to process the 9,000 applications that it received by that deadline by July 15, this Tuesday. Embassy staff have been working overtime and on weekends to honor the promise, Gendin said.

"All the paperwork is being done in the order in which we received them," she said.

At least 25 percent of all applications will probably be rejected, a rate that is relatively constant with all applications for U.S. visas, she said.

This year, however, the rejection rate could be higher because staff have noted an increase in the number of forged documents, incomplete and rushed material and ineligible applicants -- applicants who are not students.

"People have heard this [posing as students] is a way to get into the United States," Gendin said.

Scores of other students may still miss out because they got their visas so late that the positions they had hoped to fill were given to others, some exchange program agencies said.

"I'm just wondering why the new system screwed up the hopes of all these people," said Valery Kostin, general director of Artek-Tour, which works with the youth affairs department of the Education Ministry.

Kostin, who in his first year in the program in 1990 sent 23 students to the United States, has managed to secure visas for 1,260 this year, down from 1,500 in 2002.

"We increased this program to 1,500 but decided not to accept more this year because I had a feeling something dreadful was going to happen," he said Friday.

Intex, another exchange program, defended the agencies over missing the April 1 deadline. "You cannot say the delays are the fault of the agencies working in this program," Intex general director Dmitry Almukhametov said.

"It's almost impossible to make all these applications in time."

Almukhametov said the process of making an application is complex and involves finding sponsors and employers as well as cross-checking and providing documents.

"U.S. employers start to hire summer students only after the New Year, and it's hard to get everything done before February or January, and that's why we have such delays," he said.

Intex so far has sent about 650 out of 850 applicants to the United States for the summer. Seventy applicants were rejected, 100 are waiting for visas and a handful changed their minds about going after receiving their visas later than they expected.

This year, the U.S. Embassy is asking each student to fill out a form on their return from the United States, and the information will be analyzed to determine whether people did what they really said they would do and which programs and organizations did not fulfill their obligations.

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