Come to our BBS to see the statistics, to share your concern, suggesions and show your supports!

 

Pan-America Security Check Improvement Committee for Chinese Students and Scholars

Joined Universities already:

Arizona State Univ.
Boston College
Brandeis Univ.
Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Colorado State Univ.
Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center
Columbia University
Cornell Univ.
Duke University
George Washington Univ.
Georgia Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Indiana University
Iowa State Univ.
Michigan Tech. Univ.
Mississippi State Univ.
MIT
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
New Jersey Institute of Technology 
New York State Psychiatric Institute
North Carolina State University
North Texas CSSA Union, which include Univ. of Texas at Arlington, Univ. of Texas at Dallas, Univ. of Texas at Southwestern Medical Center, Southern Methodist Univ. and Univ. of North Texas
Northeastern Univ.
Northwestern Univ.
Peking University Philadelphia Alumni Association
Penn State University
Princeton Univ.
Purdue University
Queens college
Rice University
rockefeller Univ.
rohode island
Rutgers University
Springfield, Missouri University
Stanford University
stevens it
SUNY Maritime
Syracuse University
Texas, A&M
Tufts Univ.
Univ. bridgeport
Univ. of Akron
Univ. of Arizona
Univ. of California at Berkeley
Univ. of California at Los Angeles
Univ. of California at Santa Cruz
Univ. of Chicago
Univ. of Colorado, Boulder
Univ. of Conn.
Univ. of Florida 
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Univ. of Kentucky
Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County
Univ. of Maryland, College Park
Univ. of Mass., Lowell
Univ. of Miami
Univ. of Michigan
Univ. of Mississippi
Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln
Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Univ. of Oklahoma
Univ. of Oregon
Univ. of South California
Univ. of South Carolina
Univ. of Texas at Austin
Univ. of Texas Medical Branch
Univ. of Utah
Univ. of Virginia
Univ. of Washington
Univ.of South Florida
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Penn
Vanderbilt Univ.
Virginia Tech.

 

Acting Committee:

 


Case Collection and CSSA Outreach Section:

Ying Tao(Medical Informatics),Rui Zhao(Business),

Yuhong Jiang(MIT), Zhang Bei(Southern Illinois University)

 

Business Writing and Research Section:

Xu Zhang(Sociology),  Ke Xu(Journalism), Mike Ren(Economics)

Xiangjin Song(U.Penn), Chang Tan(UT,Austin)

 

Internal Coordination:

Hanfei Yan(Physics)

 

Web Development:

Helen Xu(Barnard), Li Shu(Computational Physcis), Ruchuan Liu(Chemistry),

Lexing Xie(EE), Haoqiang Zheng(CS)

 

Legal Counsel:  Lorance Hockert and Rachael Yu, Attorneys at law

 

The committee is always open to those with warm hearts and sense of responsibilities! Want to contribute to the action or join the committee, or for general information, please contact cucssa@columbia.edu

 

 

Why we do this?
   

We have been concerned about the visa security check issue for a while, since many of our friends could not come back from China on time. After consulting various resources, we developed a relatively complete proposal, including the pre-departure check suggestion, to ACSSNY. Leaders of ACSSNY had a constructive meeting with US congress and Department of State (DOS).

Recently, we have been receiving increasing inquiries of this issue from desperate students and scholars. They also expressed their encouragement to us, and hope that we, CUCSSA, can stand out for them. We then realized that we need to contribute our time, energy, practical strategies and real actions right away, instead of creating ideas only. This time consuming and energy demanding task needs more dedicated hearts. It's exciting to see that this did not become our obstacle. Many CUCSSA committee members and those having suffered from the long time check and got back to US showed great enthusiasm, and willing to offer their hands.

During the time building this web site, we also found some discusssion groups online have already done great jobs. We all understand that we need to concentrate our information and resources, and organize a dedicated team so that we can more efficiently move this action ahead. We believe: Together we can make a difference.
 

 

What are our goals?
  We have three goals:

First, build a complete visa check information center, so that people can learn more about how important and urgent the situation is.

Second, push related governmental agencies to streamline the visa check process, so that checkees can track the status of their visa applications.

Third, appeal for a pre-checking. Foreign students and scholars request security check before they leave USA, so that there can be no more desperate waiting for visa check results in their home countries. We think that this is a perfect solution, without any compromise in either US home land security or American scientific research and education.
 
Proposed Steps
 

First, collect checkees' information, as complete as possible including personal suffering in each case.  (within first two weeks)

Second, write an official report on the seriousness of the situation, the damages to checkees, universities, US higher education, and our suggestions. The report will appendix with complete checkee information and statistics. (within the first two or three weeks)

Third, present the report to all universities and academic societies, asking for signatures of university presidents, professors and congressmen.

Fourth, press release, find any efficient channels to US president, congress, DOS, and any other related government agencies to solve this issue.
 

Disclaimer:

We understand tackling this issue completely in a short time is not easy. However we want to try our best at least to provide some sort of support, to make our voice visible, to show our concern and care to those who suffer from the security check policy. If you want to contribute your time to this action, or have any suggestion or just want to talk to us, please email to cucssa@columbia.edu. Thanks!