Saria Mohamed Hassan's dream of becoming a doctor was interrupted for a year when she left the United States to conduct a brief malaria workshop in Dakar, Senegal, and then found herself stranded in a bureaucratic no-man's land: Her international student visa had expired while she was away, and her bid to renew it quickly became mired in a massive, ever-growing backlog of cases under review. Faced with a seemingly impenetrable firewall of post-9/11 security procedures, the Sudanese medical student eventually lost a year's worth of classes at Harvard.

The student-visa crisis emerged from understandable concerns, since a number of 9/11 terrorists held non-immigrant student visas. Unfortunately, suspicion seems to have turned in some quarters to something worse--xenophobia, a fear or hatred of "foreigners," which may hinder progress, notes Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); executive publisher of the AAAS journal, Science; and president of the Cambridge, U.K.-based Science International.

"Multi-national research supports life-saving advances and technological innovation, and it enriches the learning environment," Leshner says. "It's important for the scientific community to speak out against xenophobia. It jeopardizes the long-standing, important tradition of cross- cultural research collaborations, and it works against scientific advances that promise to benefit us all."

Since a shaken U.S. government tightened visa rules in the wake of terrorist attacks, the backlog of visa applications from young scholars like Hassan has continued to grow--from 1,000 cases tagged for review during 2000 under the code- named MANTIS program, one of several U.S. screening checkpoints, to 14,000 in 2002. Today, some 1,000 cases are being subjected to MANTIS review at any given point in time, U.S. Presidential Scienc
'"/>


30-May-2003

Page: 1 2 3 4
Related biology news :

1. Major scientific discovery in cancer research to be honored
2. Unique partnership between UH, FDA opens path for scientific exchange
3. Scientists issue statement on scientific peer review
4. Worlds largest scientific society convenes regional meeting June 2-4 in Indianapolis
5. Pioneering flu researcher wins major Imperial scientific award
6. New systems biology center positions UT Southwestern in vanguard of scientific research
7. Successful progress launch paves the way for further scientific utilisation of the ISS by Europe
8. International HapMap Consortium publishes scientific strategy
9. Symposium on scientific misconduct
10. Worlds largest scientific society holds regional meeting in Atlanta
11. Worlds largest scientific society holds regional meeting in Columbia, Mo.