Denial of US visas to Russians

[Marc L. Greenberg]

Dear colleagues,
    Thank you to all who have posted such helpful responses to my query,
particularly to Ms. Shevelenko for her detailed answer with many useful
suggestions.
    Indeed, I have engaged the College and Graduate School deans at my
university, who are now working through our state senators' and
representative's offices, to protest the denials.
    I was particularly interested to know whether the denials were of a
recent and local nature, i.e., limited to St. Petersburg and/or bound for
the University of Kansas. The answer seems to be that this is a
longstanding problem, particularly bad in St. P., but clearly KU is not the
only target.
    Further, I am curious to know whether there is truth to a recent rumor
that Bush and Putin cut a deal to stem the brain drain from Russian to the
US. If this is true, the consulates may be receiving fresh directives to
deny visas at all costs, in particular the study visas that we are
concerned with here.
Best wishes,
Marc
--------------------------------------------------------
Marc L. Greenberg
Chair and Professor
Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of Kansas - Wescoe Hall
1445 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 2133
Lawrence, KS 66045-7590, USA
Tel. and voice-mail: (785) 864-2349
Fax: (785) 864-4298; E-mail: mlg at ku.edu
http://www.ku.edu/~slavic/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                  http://home.attbi.com/~lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------