On December 17, 2022, Julia (pseudonym) received an admission offer from Stanford University with full financial aid. “I was overwhelmed with joy,” she told me. “My parents don’t have to pay for my education!”
Julia lives in Syria, a country that has faced mass poverty, economic recession, and currency depreciation since the Syrian Civil War erupted in 2011. Although rebels recently ousted the repressive Assad regime, the country remains impoverished and unstable. In 2019, the average Syrian salary was $143 per year, far short of covering even basic living expenditures. A scholarship to a top-tier US university would be life-changing for Julia and her family.
Julia faced one last hurdle before she could enroll: obtaining a US student visa (known officially as an F-1). For students from countries that, like Syria, the United States designates as “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” this process is fraught with bureaucratic obstacles. As leaders in secondary education and believers in opportunity for all, it is the duty of the United States to eradicate these barriers.
On June 29, 2023, Julia traveled from her hometown of Jableh to the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon for an in-person interview—the last step of her F-1 application. The US Embassy in Damascus had been closed since 2012 following the outbreak of war, so US-bound Syrians must find embassies elsewhere. Julia’s interviewer asked her the standard questions: “Which university are you headed to?” “How are you paying for your education?” “What major are you pursuing?” Then, he asked about her parents’ professions.
“My mother is a housewife,” Julia replied. “And my father works as a Syrian customs agent.” Suddenly, the interviewer began bombarding Julia with questions about her parents’ politics.
Julia explained that her parents do not engage in politics—perhaps because to be political under Assad is to risk your safety. “They don’t like politics, and so I’ve never had an interest in it,” she said to me.
As a customs agent, Julia’s father was far removed from the actions of the Assad regime, but to the embassy, the mere fact that he worked for the government warranted suspicion. The interviewer asked Julia for a letter of employment from her father. The salary statement she brought would not suffice, he said. She would need to send the letter of employment to the embassy office when she got home. He then put her file on “administrative processing.”
For most visa applicants, a decision is made at the conclusion of the interview. As such, the term “administrative processing” refers to special cases where an immediate verdict cannot be reached by the consular office. Factors that trigger the designation include an applicant’s field of study (STEM disciplines are most suspicious), prior visa denials, criminal record, or perceived threat to national security. The United States designates Syria, along with Cuba, North Korea, and Iran, as State Sponsors of Terrorism. Students from these countries face additional security clearances that almost always result in administrative processing holdups. While the government frames these clearances as essential safeguards against terrorism, in practice, they place hardworking students escaping poverty in a sort of bureaucratic purgatory. The US government insists that “there are only two possible outcomes for complete and executed US visa applications:” issuance or refusal. In Julia’s case, however, the file has been in limbo for 21 months, and she remains stuck in Syria.
Some Syrians, like Brown student Adam (pseudonym), do manage to get out. His file was in administrative processing for nine months before approval. Although Adam made it to Providence after a year of deferred enrollment, he is unable to leave the country—not even to see his family in Syria. Other international student visas have lifespans that extend for many years, allowing for multiple reentries into the United States. But the US Embassy attaches extremely short lifespans to Syrian F-1 visas; Adam’s visa was issued on June 26, 2023 and expired only two and a half months later on September 14, 2023. While Adam can leave the country, he cannot legally reenter the United States without applying for a new visa and risking administrative processing or rejection.
According to the government, the lifespan of an American F-1 visa is based on reciprocity agreements with the country in question. This means that the two countries agree to adopt the same visa stipulations (such as the number of background checks, application fees, and validity periods). Countries with amicable relations share lenient visa policies, while clashing countries have stricter ones. Through the logic of “reciprocity,” Washington justifies restrictive visa policy as merely a reaction to the antagonism of other nations. It is a way to say “they started it” without assuming any responsibility for discriminating against students on the basis of nationality.
Trying to understand why the United States sets different visa standards for different countries pains Adam. “Technically, if I graduated from Brown with X degree,” Adam tells me, “and I’m literate and I know a lot of things, I’m still worth two months of visa […] It feels like all that you work hard for is for nothing.”
By Julia’s standards, though, Adam is lucky. Once Julia returned from her interview, she sent a translated version of her father’s letter of employment to the embassy. Her case has not been updated since then. Over the past year and a half, Julia sent over 10 emails to the embassy regarding her status, and Stanford made three congressional inquiries on Julia’s behalf, compelling the local representative to contact the embassy about her case. Each time, the Department of State responded months later, claiming that there was nothing that could be done to hasten Julia’s visa process.
Because her scholarship to Stanford will expire if she does not enroll within two years of admission, Julia will have to give up on college in the United States if her visa status remains unaddressed by the summer of 2025. In a desperate last attempt, Julia is reapplying for her student visa at another US Embassy in Jordan, which she hopes will be friendlier. Now in her second gap year, Julia spends her time helping other Syrian students apply to US colleges. Some of her mentees have already started their freshman years as Julia remains in Syria, watching from afar as the people she guided live the life that she, too, deserves.
To remedy the injustice of the current visa system, the Department of State must make three changes: First, reopen the embassy in Damascus; second, standardize F-1 visa expiration dates to graduation so that students may visit family; and third, increase transparency about what exactly occurs during “administrative processing” and set caps on the time that files can remain pending. Short of these reforms, US universities will miss out on talent, and students like Julia will continue to face bleak, uncertain futures.