A year ago, Anies Baswedan was stuck in his native Indonesia, away from his family and work at NIU, while waiting for the United States to approve his visa.

This tale is not uncommon among foreign students today.

When a foreign student tries to enter the country now, he or she must be entered into SEVIS before applying for a visa. Baswedan said this process makes wanting to enter the United States much less appealing.

“It creates an image that the U.S. is no longer friendly,” he said.

Baswedan is a graduate research assistant for the College of Education’s Office of Research, Evaluation and Policy Studies. He went back to his homeland in July 2002 to do a pre-research observation for his dissertation. What he expected to be about a six-week stay in Indonesia ended up lasting about five months.

The day after Baswedan arrived in Indonesia, he applied for his visa to return to the U.S. About a month later, he checked his visa’s status, only to find out it hadn’t been processed yet. Baswedan was supposed to return to the United States in August 2002.

August came and went, and Baswedan still was waiting for the U.S. to process his visa. He wasn’t the only person caught in a predicament like that, he said. About 3,000 other Indonesians were waiting for their visas to be approved.

After months of checking the U.S. Embassy’s Web site for an update on his visa, Baswedan finally received approval in November 2002 and returned to the United States on Dec. 5.

When Baswedan applied for his visa, he said was surprised to find the form was not as detailed as he had expected it to be. This was before the institution of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, SEVIS, which is a database that holds information on all foreign students studying in the United States.

Baswedan said even though the process was tedious, he understood the theory behind the United States’ plan. He said he did not mind getting reviewed because the government has to know who is coming into the country.

However, he said he does have a problem with the amount of time it takes the U.S. to process information before issuing a visa.

“It is not the tracking that it is the problem, it is the uncertainty,” he said.

He said the government needs to inform people how long it will take for the visa to be processed so plans can be made far enough in advance. The time visa processing takes causes a lot of problems for people because they end up being detained because their status is pending.

From a U.S. perspective, Baswedan said, the measures the country is taking have a good purpose, but the process needs to be much faster. A lot of the problems tend to happen because of computer malfunctions. The people whose status was delayed most often were from predominantly Muslim countries.

The unfriendly image the United States might be creating for itself could be what causes the United States to lose revenue from foreign students. According to an article on the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) Web site, www.aacrao.org, the United States generated about $12 billion in revenue from foreign students during the 2001-2002 academic year. This money included the students’ tuition and living expenses.

Because foreign students are having more trouble obtaining visas, they might choose other countries in which to study. The United States could feel the brunt of the revenue loss in about five to 10 years, Baswedan said.

Delays in visa processing may not be just at the federal level. Over the past year, institutions of higher education have had to enter every foreign student’s information into SEVIS. No student’s visa will be approved if his or her information is not in the database.

Deborah Pierce, the executive director of International Programs, said NIU had to play catch-up this summer to enter all of its returning and new foreign students’ information.

The deadline for institutions to have all of the information entered in SEVIS was midnight on Aug. 1. Pierce said to meet the deadline, she had to work four 16-hour days. SEVIS’s computer system lacked the capacity to hold all the information that was being entered across the country, and it often crashed.

About 900 foreign students attend NIU, and 850 of those had to be entered into SEVIS before Aug. 1, Pierce said. The government issues many different types of visas, and only certain visa holders are required to be registered on SEVIS.

Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, foreign student tracking was not as involved as it is today.

“Back then, it was assumed a student was making progress toward his or her degree,” Pierce said.

Today, NIU has to prove that a foreign student is full-time, unless he or she has authorization otherwise.

If all foreign student data aren’t recorded on SEVIS prior to the semester, NIU could lose its ability to enroll some foreign students.

“It’s vital in keeping our status as an outstanding institution,” Pierce said. “We have to do it to continue as a highly international university.”