The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), as amended, is the primary body of law governing immigration and visa operations. Among other functions, the INA defines the power given to the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, immigration officers, and consular officers; delineates the categories of and qualifications for nonimmigrant visas; and provides a broad framework of operations through which foreign citizens are allowed to enter the United States. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 establishes the role of the Department of Homeland Security in the visa process, and a subsequent Memorandum of Understanding between the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security further outlines the visa issuance authorities. According to the memorandum, the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for establishing visa policy, reviewing implementation of the policy, and providing additional direction, while the State Department is responsible for managing the visa process and carrying out U.S. foreign policy. The visa adjudication process has several steps (see fig. 1). Visa applicants generally begin the visa process by scheduling a visa interview. On the day of the appointment, a consular officer reviews the application, checks the applicant’s name in the Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS), and interviews the applicant. Based on the interview and a review of pertinent documents, the consular officer determines if the applicant is eligible for nonimmigrant status under the Immigration and Nationality Act. If the consular officer then determines that the applicant is eligible to receive a visa, the applicant is notified right away and he or she usually receives the visa within 24 hours. In some cases, the consular officer decides that the applicant will need a Security Advisory Opinion (SAO), which provides an opinion or clearance from Washington on whether to issue a visa to the applicant. SAOs are required for a number of reasons, including concerns that a visa applicant may engage in the illegal transfer of sensitive technology. An SAO based on sensitive technology transfer concerns is known as a Visas Mantis and, according to State officials, is the most common type of SAO applied to science applicants. It is also the most common type of SAO sent from most of the posts we visited in China, Russia, and India. In deciding if a Visas Mantis check is needed, the consular officer determines whether the applicant’s background or proposed activity in the United States could involve exposure to technologies on the Technology Alert List (TAL). The list includes science and technology-related fields where, if knowledge gained from research or work in these fields were used against the United States, it could potentially be harmful. If a Visas Mantis is needed, the consular officer generally informs the applicant that his or her visa is being temporarily refused under Section 221(g) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, pending receipt of security clearance. After a consular officer decides that a Visas Mantis is necessary for an applicant, several steps are taken to resolve the process. The officer drafts a Visas Mantis cable, which contains information from the applicant’s application and interview. The cable is then generally reviewed by a consular section chief or other consular official at post, who then approves the Visas Mantis cable for transmission to Washington for an interagency security check. Once the cable is sent, the State Department’s Bureau of Nonproliferation, the FBI, and other agencies review the information in the cable and provide a response on the applicant to the Consular Affairs section of State headquarters. The Bureau of Nonproliferation and other agencies are given 15 working days to respond to State with any objections. However, State has agreed to wait for a response from the FBI before proceeding with each Visas Mantis case. State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs receives all agency responses pertaining to an applicant, summarizes them, and prepares a response to the consular posts. A cable is then transmitted to the post which indicates that State does or does not have an objection to issuing the visa, or that more information is needed. Generally, a consular official at post reviews the cable and, based on the information from Washington, decides whether to issue the visa to the applicant. The officer then notifies the applicant that the visa has been issued or denied, or that more information is needed. According to consular officials, in the vast majority of the cases the visa is approved. However, even when the visa is issued, the information provided by the consular posts on certain visa applicants is very useful to certain agencies in guarding against illegal technology transfer. As a result, according to the State Department, the Visas Mantis program provides State and other interested agencies with an effective mechanism to screen out those individuals who seek to evade or violate laws governing the export of goods, technology, or sensitive information. This screening, in turn, addresses significant issues of national security. State Department data are not available on the number of visas that were issued or denied to science students and scholars or the length of time it takes to issue visas to these people. Consular Affairs officials told us that State’s systems can track aggregate student or scholar data by F and J visa categories, but they cannot narrow their query search to specifically identify science students or scholars. Table 1 shows the number of visas issued and denied for students and scholars seeking visas by selected nationalities in fiscal year 2003. In addition, State data are not available on the overall number of Visas Mantis cases in fiscal year 2003 or on the Visas Mantis cases by visa category. State’s systems can track the visa process for individual cases but do not allow for aggregate queries of Visas Mantis cases. For example, State does not have data on how many Visas Mantis cases involved student visas. State also lacks data on the number of science students and scholars that undergo a Visas Mantis security check. Furthermore, State did not have aggregate data on the time frame for adjudicating a visa that required a Visas Mantis security check. The length of time for a science student or scholar to obtain a visa is not known, but a key factor in the time frame can be attributed to whether an applicant must undergo a Visas Mantis check. Since State could provide information on individual cases, we conducted our own sample of Visas Mantis cases that we obtained from State for the period between April and June 2003 and found that for these applicants, it took an average of 67 days for the security check to be processed and for State to notify the post of the results. Furthermore, our visits to posts showed that as of October 1, 2003, 410 Visas Mantis cases submitted by 7 posts in fiscal year 2003 were still pending after more than 60 days. We also found that interoperability problems among the systems that State and FBI use contributed to the time taken to process a Visas Mantis check. In addition, officials at posts we visited told us they were unsure whether they were adding to the lengthy waits by not having clear guidance on when to apply the Visas Mantis process and not receiving feedback on the amount of information they provided in their Visas Mantis requests. Aside from the time it takes to process Visas Mantis checks, we found during our fieldwork that an applicant also has to wait for an interview. Post officials and representatives of higher education scientific and governmental organizations indicated that delays in processing visas for science students and scholars could negatively affect U.S. national interests. To obtain visa data on science students and scholars, and to determine how long the visa process takes, we reviewed all Visas Mantis cables received from posts between April and June 2003, which totaled approximately 5,000. Of these cases, 2,888 pertain to science students and scholars, of which approximately 58 percent were sent from China, about 20 percent from Russia, and less than 2 percent from India. Appendix II provides additional information on the number of science student and scholar cases sent from each post. We drew a random sample of 71 cases from the 2,888 science student and scholar visa applications to measure the length of time taken at selected points in the visa process. The sample of 71 cases is a probability sample, and results from the data in this sample project to the universe of the 2,888 science visa applications. We found that visas for science students and scholars took on average 67 days from the date the Visas Mantis cable was submitted from post to the date State sent a response to the post. This is slightly longer than 2 months per application, on average. In the sample, 67 of the visa applications completed processing and approval by December 3, 2003. In addition, 3 of the 67 completed applications had processing times in excess of 180 days. Four of the cases in our sample of 71 remained pending as of December 3, 2003. Of the 4 cases pending, 3 had been pending for more than 150 days and 1 for more than 240 days as of December 3, 2003. In addition to our sample of 71 cases, State provided us with data on two samples it had taken of Visas Mantis case processing times. Data on the first sample was provided on December 11, 2003, and included 40 visa cases taken from August to October 2003. Data on the second sample was provided on February 13, 2004, and included 50 Visas Mantis cases taken from November and December 2003. State indicated that both samples show improvements in processing times compared to earlier periods in 2003. Based on the documentation of how these cases were selected, we were unable to determine whether these were scientifically valid samples and therefore we could not validate that processing times have improved. For the first sample, the data show that 58 percent of the cases were completed within 30 days; for the second sample, the data show that 52 percent were completed within this time frame. In addition, the data for both samples show that lengthy waits remain in some cases. For example, 9 of the 40 cases had been outstanding for more than 60 days as of December 3, 2003, including 3 cases that had been pending for more than 120 days.