U.S. and Hong Kong (2007)

Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs
Maura Harty
Excerpts from Remarks at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

"Study Abroad: America Welcomes You"

February 12, 2007

Assistant Secretary Maura Harty at Hong Kong Polytechnic University

A/S Harty: Thanks for giving me the time and the opportunity to talk to you about a couple of things that are very important to me and I hope to you all. This is a great institution and we love the fact that you are all pursuing advanced courses of study or will probably pursue advanced courses of study. I'm here to tell you today that we'd like you to do all of that in the United States.

I believe very strongly that the best commercial for my country IS my country. And so, I have traveled all around the world over the last several years, trying to talk to students everywhere about how much we value the opportunity to welcome you to our country, to my country, so that you can not only learn more about America by experiencing what America has to offer but also, very selfishly, so that you can teach American students about your country. I encourage American students to travel abroad. We don't, in fact, get enough American students studying abroad. And so, when we have the opportunity to welcome students from other countries to American college campuses, we're really very delighted to do that.

Assistant Secretary Maura Harty speaks to the audience

I would like to talk about some of the responsibilities that I have, and then about the visa part of it. I run what's called the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the Department of State. We do three major things. We provide passports for U.S. citizens who want to travel around the world. We issued about 12 million of those last year. We provide visas for foreign visitors who'd like to come to the United States or for foreigners who'd like to immigrate to the United States. We talked to 7.6 million people last year who wanted to visit the United States for a temporary stay and we talked to several hundred thousand other people who wanted to immigrate to the United States. The final thing that we do is take care of American citizens abroad who have a question or a problem. Sometimes they have been robbed, they've lost their passport, their wallet, their credit cards, and we have to help them recover from that. Sometimes it's much larger than that. For instance, when we saw, over the summer, conflict between Israel and certain elements in Lebanon, we found ourselves working to evacuate almost fifteen thousand American citizens from harm's way in Beirut through Cyprus and back to the United States. We as Consular Officers are the people at the Department of State who are essentially a service part of the organization, who touch people's lives every day by trying to make sure that we can help make our rules and our laws as transparent as possible for people who might need our help if they are Americans and maybe, on the American side, don't understand what's going on in the foreign country.

Assistant Secretary Maura Harty and a student

But certainly for anybody who wants to learn more about America, who wants to visit America, study in America, do business in America, that visa angle is very, very important to us. I've had the privilege over the last four years of traveling extensively and the audiences I have liked best are the audiences of students. You're smart, you're young, you've got your futures in front of you, and you have a lot of different places you can choose to go to school. So, what I'd like to say to you about that is that there are 4,000 different colleges and universities in the United States of America, so there is something for everybody. There's something that fits just about any and every need that you might have or want.

And they also range in prices. Community colleges, two year schools, tend to cost significantly less money than state schools and certainly less than private schools in the United States. You could spend two years at a community college, transfer to another American school, or you could just go for a year, studying abroad. There's any variety of ways you can do this.

Now, in the past several years, we've had a little bit of an issue, and that's the real reason I like so much to talk to students. You see, the context for our visa policy changed dramatically on September 11th. I already see some people nodding and recognizing what I was going to say next. That, in fact, on September 11th, a day that will always have a special and heartbreaking significance for us, when the attacks of September 11th, 2001, occurred, we saw 3,000 people die in my country, in the World Trade Center, in the skies over Pennsylvania, and at the U.S. Department of Defense. Citizens from 90 different countries lost their lives that day, including citizens from China. And so, we had to look at our policies, and look at how we adjudicate visas and decide who gets to come to America, a little bit differently. And we had to build a better system than we had, and I'll tell you, quite frankly, as we built it, it was very inefficient when we first started.

So, some of you may have heard stories, or maybe you have older brothers and sisters, or people that you know, who had a harder time getting a visa than we intended them to have. But we had to build a better system, we took a little bit of time, and one of the reasons I'm on the road so much these days is simply to be able to say, if you've heard a story about how hard it is to get a visa, that is now, in fact, very much out of date, especially here. About 98% of the students in Hong Kong who apply for visas to study in the United States, get them. About 98%! So if you're thinking, as you're considering going abroad to study, that America is a little bit harder than some other places, that's old news. It's very old news.

But the sad truth is that a bad news story runs around the world seven or eight times before a good news story gets out of bed and has breakfast. And so, we have to travel ourselves to say to you, if you have a question, or an issue, about studying in the United States, we have a whole Consulate General here full of people who will talk to you about that, who will make sure you understand the process. We've got websites, we do speeches, and we want very much to welcome you to the United States.

What do we know about studying abroad? It certainly expands your horizons. As I also said, it expands the horizons of the people that you meet when you are in my country. But, more importantly than that, it forms a much stronger bond between our nations. When you go the United States and study, and then come back here to Hong Kong, having had that experience on an American college campus, I know that you will become business and community and civic and social leaders. I know that you will probably, most of you, become parents as well and when you think about having a foreign experience again, when you think, perhaps, about investing, about growing your business internationally, about where you might send your children to school internationally -- it's a little bit down the line, but it's going to happen someday -- I'd like you to think fondly about an experience you had in an American school on an American college campus, any one of the 4,000 I have talked about.

That's my real reason for coming today, just simply to be able to say to you that America welcomes you, that 98% of you who apply for visas to the United States to study, will get those visas. I want to make sure that you understand that it is a very personal invitation: that my government feels very strongly and the American people feel very strongly that we are a richer nation when we continue to do what we always have done.

I talk a lot about the United States of America as being a nation of nations. Right after September 11th, there were a number of people in my country who said, well, we shouldn't do that anymore. We should close the borders. Thank goodness, Colin Powell, who was then Secretary of State, echoed what the President said, just on that very day of those terrible attacks, that we must continue to keep the doors and the borders of America open to well-intentioned travelers. We must continue to be as faithful to our history as we always have been. We must realize that the thing that makes us safest is the thing that has always made us strong and interesting, that is: when we welcome creativity from all around the world, when we embrace the diversity and the difference that not only immigration has brought to our country, but that the visits of thousands, in fact millions, of people every year to come to our schools, to come as tourists, to come as business travelers. We welcome you. We welcome you now as students, as we will welcome you later as tourists, as business investors, as parents bringing their children to the college campuses I hope you've gone to.

That's really why we're here today. We want to make sure that you realize that there's a wide variety of opportunities in America, and we ask not only that you come for your own academic training and experience, but that you help America understand Hong Kong better by spending a year or two or three or four on an American college campus. I think I'll stop there and see if there are some questions.

Q&A Session

Q: I'm from Burma and I feel really privileged and very pleased for this moment to raise a question. I have a friend from Burma, actually, and she received a scholarship from a university in the States, but her visa was rejected. Of course not everyone has been rejected for a visa -- there are a lot of people from Burma, actually, studying in the States as well -- but my question is, when it comes to the issue of visas, who actually really decides whether to issue the visa to this particular person or not? And then also, for studying, for this kind of purpose, what are the real priorities, how do you look at a person, whether he or she deserves to have a visa? Thank you very much.

A/S Harty: Thank you very much for your question and I'm glad to meet you, I'm glad you're here today. I appreciate the question, because it gives me a chance to demystify the process a little bit. And let me say first that I'm also sad to hear that you knew somebody who wanted to study in the States who couldn't do that. Of course, I can't know why in that specific case, but I can tell you very broadly how it works. According to U.S. immigration law, which is sometimes a little bit hard to understand, the Consular Officer who interviews you must be persuaded that you, the applicant for the visa, intend to return to your place of residence after your trip to the United States.

People demonstrate that intention in very different ways. For instance, if I weren't an American citizen, and I were applying for a visa as a 47-year-old woman, I would talk about the fact that I was leaving my husband at home, and that I have a house, a dog, a car, and a career. These are the reasons that, after a short trip out of the country, I would be coming back. Those are genuine reasons that make sense.

Students don't actually have most of those things yet. Some do, I suppose, but most don't. Most are a little bit younger, not quite as established. So what we look for from students are several things that are a little bit different and it's very important that you pay attention to this and think about it before you go for that interview. What do we need to know from a student? We need to know the student has been accepted at a school in the United States. We need to have some proof that the student is able to pay for that first year of study abroad. Then we need the student to be able to explain to us how their course of study in the United States is going to help them when they return home. This is perhaps the part that requires the most thinking, and that some fail to do before the interview.

It's not always so easy to articulate, but really before you have that interview, you want to think through the answer to that question. I don't know if you've looked at the Consulate General's website -- hongkong.usconsulate.gov. I would really recommend you scrolling through that before you go to the interview, so you have an idea of what to expect. So that you're not panicking that you failed to bring whatever kind of documentation you needed to bring, or that you failed to think through why it is you're going to do this.

We have no numerical cap on the number of students we can give visas to from any country in any given year. The more the merrier. As a matter of fact, last year we hit an all-time high for foreign students in the United States, which delights us. There are over half a million foreign students in the United States right now.

There are 62,000 students from China in the United States. But we'd like there to be more. In fact, we'd also like more American students to consider studying in China. I think China is for us, in the top 10 destination countries for American students studying abroad. We'd like to see that number grow as well. We'd like to see it go both ways.

Q: I'm from Mexico and I've been studying here for three and a half years. And, at one point I considered furthering my studies in the U.S. But, money would be an issue for me, and I've known people who've been accepted at U.S. universities and have applied for scholarships, but being Mexican it's kind of hard to get them, and, I'm wondering whether there is any specific website or any specific place that you recommend students to look.

A/S Harty: I have one idea but then I'm wondering if Katherine [Fung-Surya, Institute of International Education Representative] would like to say something as well. I was at Beijing University about a year and a half ago, and a student asked a similar question. She said that she was relatively certain that she was going to be able to get a scholarship from a school in England, but not so sure she would get one from the United States. She said she had, in fact, been accepted to a school in America, as well as to a school in England. And I told her to go ahead and write this school in America and say, this is what the Brits are going to pay, and start a little competition. Because there are so many schools in America that do welcome the diversity, that do want foreign students, and if that student, I said to her, was as good as she thought she was, then she could probably get a little competition going for that. Individual schools certainly do have pots of money, and certainly some schools are more affluent than others, and certainly some reserve for in-state or for a variety of different things, but you need to have a conversation with the school you're considering going to, and ask just exactly that question. But I might ask Katherine to talk for one minute.

Katherine Fung-Surya, IIE: Thanks for the question. I do think that a lot of students look for scholarships elsewhere in the U.S., but for your case I would encourage you to go visit our website, the IIE website, www.iie.org, that's our New York website where there are links into various sites for scholarships. And I also encourage you to come to our center in Hong Kong where we may also be able to offer some assistance to you. Again, the website here in Hong Kong is www.iiehongkong.org.

A/S Harty: Thank you. Another traditional idea: the Rotary Club helps young people all around the world. And I wanted to comment on something you mentioned, about being from Mexico so it's hard to get a scholarship. I'm assuming the reason for that is because you think that there are a lot of Mexican students already in the United States. I was at our Consulate in Guadalajara last year, and the day before I was there, there had been a fair. I asked at the Consulate, did we get a lot of Mexican students looking to go to the United States? And they said, no. Almost no one came to the fair. Why? I asked. Well, because their perception was that Mexican students found the United States of America too familiar. And so they all wanted to go to Hong Kong.

I did my first tour in the Foreign Service in Mexico. I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I knew about Mexico until I had the great privilege of living there. So, I hope you give us a chance.

Q: Hello, Ms. Ambassador, thank you for being here this afternoon. Thank you for the warm invitation, in fact. My name is Alex, and I'm a PhD. candidate here at Poly U. I'm studying at the school of Hotel and Tourism Management. I'm from Germany, in fact, and I was very well received when I was in 11th grade in high school in California. I have friends in America. I am planning on going to Las Vegas to be a visiting scholar there. My question is: what do you think is the competitive edge of the United States' educational system in the tertiary sector compared to Asia, and to Europe in particular. Aside from institutions like Yale, Stanford, Georgetown… These are well, well established institutions all over the world. On average, what gives your educational system a competitive edge? Thank you.

A/S Harty: I think the competitive edge really continues to be sheer choice. The diversity of academic experiences available in the United States means that everybody in this room can have something different. There are over 4,000 academic institutions in the United States, and you're not only looking at the program itself, but you're looking at the place. You're looking at what part of the United States you want to live in. Think about what you can do in the United States with 4,000 different places to choose from. We're not only talking about weather-related issues, we're talking about if you're in Washington, D.C., the kind of internships you can get to learn how the U.S. Federal Government works. If you're doing it in New York City, or any other major city, you can look at businesses. There are just such a wide variety of opportunities. Go to a community college like Miami-Dade Community College where there are students from 78 different countries. It's like going to school at the United Nations. The diversity of an American campus could be a competitive edge if that is something that interests you.

Q: I have a little sibling who's planning on studying in the U.S. When we were discussing which university to choose, it actually turns out to be quite, quite problematic to find the right institution. So you are saying there is an institution out there in the U.S. that caters for educational needs, and I'm sure there is. However, which website, which institution in the United States, actually caters for foreign students' needs when it comes to being directed through the tertiary educational system in the U.S.? That is a very hard question, I suppose.

Ms. Fung-Surya, IIE: In the best interest of your sister's different choices, I would think that it's really best to go to the State Department website, educationusa.state.gov. When you go in there you will see a map, and you can just click on the individual country to see a whole list of advising centers. Your sister can go there and seek assistance and other information. If we can offer any assistance here in Hong Kong, we'd be most happy to do so. For instance, for testing and some general information we can direct you to the appropriate website or even offer you materials. So I'd encourage you and the others here to come and visit our center and our website. Hope that helps.

Q: Hello, my name is Peter Li. I'm the director of the International Office here at Hong Kong Baptist University. The particular section of the immigration law that governs non-immigrant students pretty much speaks quite clearly that you are basically a presumed intending immigrant until you can prove otherwise. Now that part of the law, as far as U.S. immigration rules go, has been in existence for 50, 60 some years. Some of my colleagues in international education have been saying that it's quite obsolete. From the standpoint of the State Department, first of all, are there any suggestions or any actions taken in changing that particular section of the law or any influence that the State Department is making? And second of all, of course I know by your presentation earlier that 98% of the non-immigrant student visa applicants have been approved here, and I'm glad to hear that. But there are some of your colleagues that work in the State Department in various countries that are not as well developed, and presumably your colleagues in the State Department may say, “Hey, I need to think twice, or three times, or four times, before I would approve a visa,” using that presumed immigrant section of the law to reject those visas, and I want to hear your response on that.

A/S Harty: Sure. The section of the law, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as amended, is 214(b). But it is not restricted to students. It is for every single conversation we have about any category. If somebody comes in and wants to be a tourist, wants to go to the United States for whatever reason, that is the way the law is written across the board. We don't write the law. We are, however, law abiders. And we are also charged with carrying out the law as written. So, it is the Congress of the United States that has, since the early 1950's, decided that this is an important part of the Immigration and Nationality Act. So it isn't the State Department's to change at all.

Now with particular reference to students, and we've sent messages out on this to all of our colleagues in the field, is that we talk about a sort of “dual intent” of a student who someday might want to think about immigrating to the United States … Might, after they spend 7 or 8 years in graduate school and post-graduate school in the United States, but at the moment they apply for that visa they intend to come home, as they tell us they do. And that is what gives us the kind of approval rate for student visa applications in this country. It is, in fact, not the same everywhere. Because it is, in fact, the case that other places don't necessarily offer the same kind of opportunities to use a degree that you have received in the United States back in your own country, at least as lucratively as you would if you were to stay in the United States.

So, Foreign Service officers around the world are paid to understand the push and the pull factor. What causes a person to leave their own country, and what pulls them back to their own country. If you were in an Eastern European country where mining is a sort of common-place job and you (the Officer) read in the paper, because you live there, and you speak the language, that there's a 35% employment rate for miners in that country, and a miner came up to your window and said, “I'm just going to Chicago for 3 weeks to stay with my sister,” you'd probably tend to think that since 65% of those guys are unemployed, I'm not actually really sure that's what he's going to do. And that's in fact the kind of knowledge base we are expected to acquire about a place as we live there, as we speak the language, as we read the papers. We don't actually relish turning down visas. That is not what we're about. We prefer to be able to have people understand what the parameters are. Understand what is going to occur during the visa interview. And we far prefer to issue a visa than to refuse a visa. In any category. But 214(b) is a part of the law, it is a legal presumption, and in fact that is what we have to abide by. We do carry out the law of the land.

Q: I have a question about mainland students who are currently studying in Hong Kong. If they are going to the States to study, I just want to ask about the visa situation for them.

A/S Harty: Mainland students studying here right now have the same issuance rate as Hong Kong students studying here right now. It is the same.

Q: Can they apply for visas in Hong Kong?

A/S Harty: Yes, absolutely. It's true that you can apply wherever you are physically present, but you do need to be able to prove that you have an intention of going back to your place of abode after it's all over. But, they're doing that here. Thank you for your question because it gives me an opportunity to underscore, we're talking about students here in Hong Kong. What do we know about mainland students studying here? You're a serious student. There's not any question in our minds that you're a serious student. And, you would add value to an American college campus. There's no doubt about it.

Q: Hello, my name's Harry, and I'm now studying physics in Poly U., and I've got a question. I have a friend that told me that Yale University gave him an offer but he was rejected to get a visa because the subject he was studying is optic information and communications. So, I have a question: will it be hard for me to get a visa if I want to study some high-tech fields in the United States? Thank you.

A/S Harty: Thank you for the question. Most of the time, it takes a little bit longer when you are studying in a high-technology field, where we have a concern or a question about illegal technology transfer issues. But it often means it just takes a little bit longer -- on a magnitude of weeks, not months or years, but weeks -- to get that visa. About 97% of all people who apply for visas in any category just need to go through the process that you see happen at the consulate. For that other 3% we will need to do an extra round of checks in Washington D.C. You're a young man, you're not a guy that's been doing physics for 42 years in a laboratory here. So, it shouldn't take that much longer to do yours. What I would urge you to do when you get acceptance to an American university, that you not wait until the last minute to apply. Now, at the Consulate General in Hong Kong, students don't even need an appointment. So, what I just like to recommend is that you apply earlier rather than later. Get your passport lined up and go in and have that visa interview. We do not want to make you miss the first day of school. I will not be responsible for you failing to get your homework assignment in, okay? (Laughter) We want to make sure that you get to an American college campus and start the semester on time. So, knowing that you are in that kind of course, just give us a couple of weeks extra to do it.

Q: I have a question about the working issues. Can students from other countries work in the U.S. when they graduate? Or do they have to go back home to contribute to their own country first?

A/S Harty: There are lots of different programs. Depending on what you study, there are practical training programs after you finish your degree in some instances. The foreign student adviser at the school that you're going to will be able to inform you about what options exist. But normally, at the end of a course of study, if you don't have that practical training element or you are not continuing to study, then you would be expected to go home again. Now, that doesn't mean you can't ever come back to the United States. You may find that there's a company that wants your skills and sponsors you for a certain kind of work visa. But that all gets a little bit complicated. So you're not forbidden to work in the United States, but there are processes you need to go through. And one of the things that's true, especially in the post-September 11th world, is that the enforcement of U.S. immigration law is a very serious business. So, you need to always make sure that you work with your foreign student adviser's office so that you are certain that you are doing things exactly the right way. Your foreign student adviser, as you look at a school in the United States, can inform you about practical training and about what you might or might not have available to you. As far as working when you're in the United States, that's a little bit difficult. Usually if there is work available it's going to be on campus, not off campus. But that's another thing to talk to your foreign student adviser about. I would expect there might also be information about that on the website educationusa.state.gov.

Q: Good afternoon. My name is Kingston, and I have a question. For example if I have studied in Poly U. for several years, and I want to study in the U.S., should I start from the beginning, I mean, can my GPA be transferred to a university and I can start where I have stopped?

A/S Harty: The answer is yes, you may transfer. It probably depends on the school.

Ms. Fung-Surya, IIE: Go to educationusa.state.gov, or just identify a few schools first, and then go to their individual school websites, and find out the information.

Q: Just now, you mentioned that 98% of students in Hong Kong who apply for a visa to study abroad in the U.S. get one. How about the percentage of mainland students?

Consulate Staff: We ran statistics for Hong Kong passport holders as well as mainland passport holders who were applying here in Hong Kong. It was over 98 percent for both of those categories.

Q: I would like to know if it is easier to apply for the visa in Hong Kong.

A/S Harty: You know, I would say that it is more a reflection of the kind of students that come here. You're coming to Hong Kong from the Mainland, you're in a school like this… or several of the other schools from which we see applicants … You're clearly identifying yourself to us as a serious student. So, it's really a reflection of what you have chosen to do before you applied for the U.S. visa. You're already here as a student. It's not a question of it being easier, it's a question of the applicant pool. You're pretty good.

I would like to do two more things. One, thank you all very, very much for coming and giving us an hour of your time this afternoon. And two, ask you to please remember, that the welcome mat is out. We would love to see you, or your younger sisters and brothers, on American college campuses and I hope that you'll take advantage of the two websites you see up there. Thank you all very much for coming today.