Just getting accepted to an American college or university does not guarantee that you will get a visa. And getting a visa just lets you arrive in the United States. It does not guarantee that an immigration officer will permit you to enter the country.
Travel documents come from the Department of State. But immigration is the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.
The State Department has a Web site with all the rules for getting a visa. The address is unitedstatesvisas.gov. Unitedstatesvisas is all one word.
If you are requesting a visa for the first time, you will probably have to go to an American embassy or consulate. You will need to bring a government form sent to you by your American school that shows you have been accepted.
You will also need banking and tax records that show you have enough money to pay for your education. And be prepared to provide evidence that you will return to your home country after your studies end.
All of this is important in satisfying the requirements to get a visa. A consular official will also take your picture and your fingerprints.
Foreign students must contact their local embassy or consulate to request an interview and to get other information. This includes directions about how and where to pay the visa application charge. The cost is two hundred dollars.
You should apply for the visa as soon as you have been accepted to a school in the United States. The government needs time to perform a background investigation.
You cannot receive a visa more than one hundred twenty days before the start of your program. And if you are coming as a student for the first time, you cannot enter the country more than thirty days before classes begin.
SEVIS is the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.
More than nine thousand American colleges, universities and exchange visitor programs are required to use this electronic system. It links them with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in the Department of Homeland Security.
The terrorist attacks in two thousand one led to the creation of the department. But SEVIS was being developed even before the attacks as a way to improve record keeping on foreign students in the United States. Some of the September eleventh hijackers entered the country on student visas.
With SEVIS, a school enters information about a student. The system lets the school know when the student has arrived. The school must then provide reports on whether or not the student is attending classes. Students who violate the terms of their visa can be expelled from the country and may be denied future entry.
Two examples of violations are failing to begin classes by the required date and working at a job without permission. Other violations are not attending classes full time and not leaving the country after completion of studies.
SEVIS currently lists more than one million active, nonimmigrant students and exchange visitors and their dependents.
Students and exchange visitors are charged fees to help pay for the system. The fee for students increased to two hundred dollars in September. This is the visa application charge we talked about last week.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the fee must be paid before going to an embassy or consulate for the visa interview.