LOS ANGELES, Sept 28: The current US policy on issuing student visas will severely hit the finances of American academic institutions, according to dean and professors of leading universities.

Besides bringing world culture to campuses, foreign students boosted the US economy by 11 billion dollars during the 2000-2001 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education.

“Clearly, it has the potential to be a really serious situation,” said Greg Leonard, director of Boston University’s Office of International Students.

Already, he said, some overseas groups that sponsor students are steering them toward schools in less strict Canada, Australia, and Western Europe instead of the United States.

Since Sept 11 last year, thousands of students have been forced to delay their return to US universities- in some cases indefinitely - as their visa applications undergo unprecedented scrutiny by the State Department.

Larry Bell, director of international student and scholar services at the University of Colorado, is monitoring visa delays nationally and believes thousands of foreign students and university researchers have been affected in the last three months.

He expects the backlog and waiting periods to grow as students overseas apply for January enrolment.

At Boston University, there were 4,443 students from other countries last year - the fifth largest number in the country.

The number of new students held up overseas is still unclear, but Leonard expects to lose between 40 and 200 international students, in total, to visa problems this year.

At MIT, which hosts some 800 international students, at least six are still awaiting visas, and 60 endured extra security checks, said Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook, associate dean for international students.

Tufts University is still awaiting eight students with visa problems. Four Chinese graduate students were denied visas and forced to defer their admission by a year.

Jane Etish-Andrews, director of Tufts International Center, expects the new policies to deter some students. “I think parents in certain places are going to say, ‘Why not go to Britain?’” she said.

International students expected delays this academic year, but few thought they would last months. Visa processing slowed dramatically last month after the new rules for Arab men went into effect, schools said.

Men from Middle Eastern countries have waited the longest; students from Malaysia, Russia and China have also faced unusual scrutiny.

And students are not the only ones affected. At the California Institute of Technology, administrators are dismayed by a summer-long visa delay that is keeping Russian physicist Vladimir Braginsky out of the country.

“This is an important guy, somebody who has been working with us here for years and years,” Mary Gooding, director of Cal Tech’s International Scholars Service told Dawn. “Everybody is nervous about these new policies and very, very embarrassed.”

More new rules took effect this year on Sept 11. Until an electronic student-tracking system is put in place by the government next year, universities must post a verification document on a State Department website for every international student they admit.