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Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Iranian Students Denied U.S. Visas Over Spying Fears

Bloomberg News’ Daniel Golden stopped by our studios at WBUR in Boston. (Jesse Costa/Here & Now)

Just before the start of the school year, President Obama signed a new law that denies visas to Iranian students who plan to take courses that might prepare them for careers in fields critical to Iran’s nuclear energy program.

The visa denials come as the number of Iranian students in the U.S. is growing sharply. Universities and high tech companies says the law is making it harder for them to recruit and keep talented engineers and scientists.

Intelligence officials are increasingly worried that important secrets are leaking to foreign students working on sensitive research projects in the U.S.

Guest:

  • Daniel Golden, editor-at-large for Bloomberg News
Other stories from Tuesday's show

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

  • Call_Me_Missouri

    It sounds to me like it is high time these put out Iranian Students held an Old-Fashioned Protest against their government.  This notion that the only reason this law was put into place was to ensure our security is myopic.    There is a secondary reason, like sanctions, these laws are put in place to starve “the people” so they can effect change from inside.  These students have an obligation to themselves to protest every day that they are not in classes in the US and if they don’t do that… then maybe they are a security risk and shouldn’t be here.

    We have no obligation to educate foreign students.  In fact, it is Iran’s job to instruct their own youth and perhaps Iran could consider doing that if they are not going to make policy changes.

  • oprichniki

    While I was a PhD student in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan in the late 1960′s I had Iranian classmates, and together we learned how to separate uranium isotopes  and how to implode plutonium spheres. Their bomb effort did not begin recently. In the last decade, the University of Michigan has been training Communist Chinese students in all kinds of weapons technology. Our Federal officials have no understanding of the need for national security.

  • sayid

    hi
    i am from iran i have good information about government iran i want work for usa.

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