Public opinion is sharply divided on proposed visa changes impacting international students and journalists. Concerns are prevalent regarding limited educational and job opportunities, while some argue these changes will protect American jobs. Overall, the discussion reveals underlying tensions surrounding nationalism, globalization, and economic competition.

U.S. Government

American Workforce

Yup, been hearing that from everyone in my circle as well. The common theme seems to be this: 

“If you’re finger printed, have a SEVIS record, ever even entered into the police records, you’re likely to get a notice, regardless of whether you were guilty of any crime.” 

Have heard of people getting notices because they got a ticket for DUI, speeding, tail light not working, parking violation. In all cases, their charges had been dropped entirely.

_swades_

I met an Indian guy whose sister goes to a Boston based school, and she had a friend who was deported back to India. This deported student wasn't politically active or a provocateur or anything, but the Indian guy told me that he had some outstanding parking tickets.

ForsakenEvent5608

So insane. I don't even understand the goal. It's a *good* thing for the US to attract international students, especially because they're usually rich and/or STEM majors. Maybe the admin's going to pretend they're all protestors so they can inflate and brag about the numbers.

mulemoment

DUI - I feel this one is likely going to cause a LOT of revocations. This country detests DUI...and will likely go hulk on this once the silly parking ticket violations thing cools off.

titan1978

Lmaooooo and you guys were talking about Canada sucking for Indians.

rbatra91

No-Dragonfruit-5423

Remember when leftist said Biden was Genocide Joe… and Kamala was going to be worse than Trump … 

I remember

Manic_Mania

I highly doubt any ABCDs are on student visas

AssCrackBanditIV

Separate_Tea_4957

I understand that this might affect a lot of people, but one thing to keep in mind is that even within families, people don't tell each other everything. It is entirely possible some of these people have bigger infractions than just parking tickets that they didn't tell their families about.

jardaninovich

I’m just not sure what we are supposed to be doing more. I’ve been a democrat for a decade and have been working to educate and warn of this shit and voting and advocating and protesting and now I’m just watching the government I was raised to believe we have fall apart and get hijacked and I literally don’t know what I, a new mother and a wife to a conditional green card holder, am supposed to do now. If I do anything publicly they will surely go after my husband. All these warnings are too late. People are even still arguing that this isn’t happening or that it’s acceptable. I just don’t know what we do from here but pray we can somehow get control of our government at midterms.

[deleted]

I couldn’t care less about someone on a student visa. This is a sub for ABCDs. You know the H1-B seeking student visa horde will hurt ur chances in the job market, right?

RevolutionaryApple25

Do you have proof of this or should we take whatever you pull out of your ass as the truth?

Agreeable-Leading996

The funny thing about this is that I've always avoided traveling to countries where you can get in trouble for criticizing the government. I've refused trips that my company tried to send me on if I disagreed with the laws of that country or if it would somehow put me at risk.

But... I live in this one.

mediocre_remnants

Can’t you just say you don’t have accounts or delete your accounts? How would they know if you don’t present the information. I’m interested to know as society descends into madness.

chonpwarata

Government waste in action. You know they would hire more agents to process these new requirements.

ducationalfall

When I say to my American colleagues that I spent part of last year living in Beijing, they react as if I went to North Korea. Funny thing is, the US is a lot worse in terms of violating peoples privacy, censorship and corruption. 
I would never feel safe in the US.

julmonn

Can't picture living in US under visa in this climate. And that's coming from someone that has spent 10+ years in different countries under less than permanent entitlements

AnomalyNexus

Aren't you supposed to be the "land of the free" ? Or is that freedom only applicable to republicans to spew their shit ?

I really don't see the problem with this. Why would we want to admit people that hate the US?

Imaginary_Poetry_233

This isn’t new, to remain in status you must attend school full time anyway. Just follow the attendance rules for each individual class and you’ll be fine.

I mean you are here to study, so this should be obvious

Motor_Fox_9451

Meh, this really depends. I know people who missed a lotta classes but were pretty smart so got really good grades. But yea try not to be invisiible to your professors and youre good.

FineProfessor3364

I had a plenty of smart classmates who didn't come to classes and still got As on finals.

Outrageous_Page_978

Man, I am in the same boat. I had an e-visa rejected and then went into the local VFS office to try to apply again for a tourism visa, because the e-visa rejection notice said to apply for a 'regular' or paper visa in person. 

Turns out the VFS person said "all writers of any kind are automatically rejected now." welp

The_MacChen

TakeTheFlight

Just want to add on to this thread, which was extremely helpful when I had to navigate the same thing ahead of a trip to India for a wedding as someone who is not a journalist, but just worked at a media org. About ten days before I was supposed to leave, I applied for an E-visa which takes "72-hours" or faster. I applied for a eVisa saying that I worked in "Media" at my company which you are required to list, and within 24-hours got a follow up email asking for more information about my role and trip. I was confused as I'm not a journalist -- I make ads. After responding to the eVisa team with my information and clarifying this, they went silent and despite trying to call (and no one picking up despite trying multiple different hours of the day) and emails, I started to panic. 

Found this thread and figured they must think I'm a journalist. 

So I scheduled an appointment with the VSF office in NYC to apply for a J-Visa (make sure to bring an app explicitly for a Journalist Visa, even if you're doing tourism, or you will have to re-fill out for $$ at the office. Also, don't bring your laptop or they will "pay to store it" as you're not allowed to have it in the office). At the office, I told them I wasn't a journalist and they still said I must apply for a J-Visa. So, I went through that process, with passport copy, a photo, letter from my company saying i was not there for work, the app, description of my job, my itinerary, etc). At first, they told me that it would take 4-5 days to process, but as I had wasted so much time waiting on the J-Visa, I asked what could be done to speed it up. They took pity on me and let me file the forms on-site, and the bring them up myself to the consulate on the same day. 

The day after, I got an email asking for more information on my trip, including flights, hotels, wedding invite, etc. So I provided that over email and then waited. The next morning, day 2, they called me and asked even more information about my company and my role. I answered those on the phone. I got antsy, as I was up against a flight deadline, and emailed them asking for an update. I got an update via email that I was approved around 5 p.m. on the second day. PHEW! Wanted to share my  experience as there is not a clear process guide online. 

QueenoftheNoche

I also got rejected after listing that I was a journalist...has anyone had any luck re-applying and listing a different occupation? Or do they reference your past applications and flag discrepancies? I technically work as a writer for a non-profit that mostly does urban planning work and journalism isn't exactly what I do...

KookyGear4787

Jumping in here to see if I can get any advise. I have applied for the journalist visa as a journalist. I received a no objection letter from the consulate and then applied for visas for myself and 2 colleagues. I am so anxious about how long this process will take. I have given us about a month from application time to time of travel. I tried to give more time but it took 6 weeks to receive the no objection letter.

I have travel before my India trip to visit family in Europe and so will need my passport back in another 13 days in order to make it on that trip. Curious what turn around times people ave been seeing. Im so stressed.

CoolImplement5887

Edit: I've updated the original post with more details about my entire process. Hope it brings solace/reassurance/insight!

Practical_Ad1261

This thread was super helpful to me in getting my J visa approved, so I wanted to add a more recent experience for folks in the same position since I know how anxious it is to wait. 

Backstory: I got accepted to a journalist's conference in India and even the organization hosting it had no idea that we needed to apply for a special journalist's visa, or how involved that was. So I was not exactly going "as" a journalist in the sense of having an Indian media organization available to sponsor me, but definitely couldn't just mark myself a "freelancer" or "content creator" and sneak by with a normal tourist visa. 

Because I live \~5 hours from the nearest consulate, at the org's suggestion (+ with their reimbursement, which was good because it was not cheap), I ended up hiring the company Visa HQ to help me apply/send my passport to the closest consulate through the mail. To be honest, they were not always great, but I suspect the experience was better than it would have been if I had applied directly to the consulate, because I am not confident I would have gotten my visa in the end without them.   
  
Basically, Visa HQ just checks the documents you'd be submitting to the consulate directly and flags errors + things that need to be changed. This includes persnickety little details that are not stated anywhere on the consulate website, e.g. certain non-obvious docs needing to be printed on company letterhead, very specific/inane formatting requirements for sponsoring letters, etc. They also helped me figure out how to get a letter from an Indian organization when an American NGO was hosting the conference.   
  
That said: every time they found an error they took a couple of days to ask me to make a change, which made my timeline for application really tight and ultimately forced me to pay a rush fee, which was frustrating, but it was too late to bail at that point. They also made some data entry problems with my app (e.g. a flipped birthdate, saying at tattoo listed under "identifying marks" was on the wrong arm) which I caught and had to ask them to change. Still, asking questions directly of the consulate would have cost $2.50 a minute (seriously, they charge for phone calls), and I don't know how helpful they would have been considering they make more money off denying people than approving them. So bottom line: I do recommend VisaHQ, but I also recommend applying a LOT earlier than they say you need if at all possible, and double-checking their work very thoroughly. 

The whole process with Visa HQ took about a month. It was definitely scary mailing my passport off with no idea of when I'd get it back, but I talked to multiple friends who had gotten consular visas in the past and decided to trust them. I signed up for updates from the consulate itself (or more accurately, the contractor they use, VFS Global), but besides confirming receipt, those updates were not super helpful or contain really any information. It took a solid three weeks for them to send me my passport back, and I didn't know that I'd actually been approved until I opened the fed ex envelope and saw the visa myself. The whole process, end to end, took about 7 weeks and got me my documents two weeks before my flight; a nail biter, but it all worked out in the end. Hope this is helpful for others who have to go through this process! It's not intuitive and incredibly time consuming but approval is possible.

Various_Ask5302

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"Support for terrorism"

Human rights are terrorist to fascism, so...

ExpressAssist0819

I'd bet you could exclude the first three and still have the "vast majority"

scoff-law

Suddenly we are finding a lot of terrorism. Bombs should be exploding left and right

yoshimipinkrobot

Hadrian23

"Support for terrorism" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

FaultySage

The U.S. has no Domestic Terrorism laws (we should). I assume they are calling anything they want "terrorism."

DougOsborne

Before this admin, I felt safer and nothing happened. Suddenly there’s all these terrorists? Lies all over the place

TBB09

We will soon find out that of all those grouped into assault, DUI, burglary, and ‘support for terrorism’, more than 95 percent were just ‘support for terrorism’.

rsmiley77

Proposed changes to visa regulations could severely limit the number of international students and journalists entering the U.S., raising concerns over educational and press freedoms.

US Visa Policy Changes for Students and Journalists

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Public Sentiment Summary

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What the people want