"You wanted to go to the United States? Well, now deal with it!" I remember with a smile my roommate teasing me one spring day last year when I was still back home in France. At that time, I was bogged down with the process of gathering all the documents needed to get a U.S. visa for my exchange year at U.Va. And I was just grasping why fewer and fewer French students -- andinternational ones in general -- actually decide to study in the United States...
Most of those who have gone through it would agree: Getting a U.S. student visa is a costly and quite unpleasant process. To begin with, bills don't stop adding up. Dare I think that the $100 embassy fee was my only due? I was way off the mark.
Indeed, I soon learned about SEVIS, at the expense of my wallet. The Student Exchange Visitor Information System is a Web-based system set up in response to the fraudulent use of student visas by two of the 9/11 hijackers and is meant to track information on non-immigrant international and foreign exchange students attending school in the United States. According to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Web site, "The mission of SEVIS is to balance homeland security with facilitating foreign student and exchange visitor participation in America's outstanding academic and cultural exchange programs."
The truth is that, far from "facilitating" your arrival, all SEVIS does is cost you another $100.
Yet some smaller bills have strangely proved to be the hardest to accept. When I was calling the U.S. embassy to make an appointment for the mandatory interview last year, I was a little shocked to hear as the welcome sentence, "What's the number of your credit card?" Each call is indeed charged exactly
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