More than 4,000 people want to see change in the way the U.S. government handles their visas, according to a Yale University-based petition.

An academic visa reform petition is circulating the country, garnering signatures and support from 25 universities and various national organizations. The Yale-based petition calls for the U.S. government to create a more efficient and streamlined visa process.

“People don’t go home anymore,” said Qin Qin, co-writer of the petition and junior in engineering and applied science at Yale. “There is a lot of uncertainty when you go home.”

After Sept. 11, the government has been setting up visa policies and procedures that don’t make any sense, Qin said. According to information distributed by the U.S State Department, policies regarding student visas changed after Sept. 11. All students now have to fill out three new forms to complete their visa application. In addition, an electronic file, the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System or SEVIS, must be created and maintained by the student’s institution. Ken Liu, researcher at Graduate Employees and Students Organizations at Yale, would also like to see a change in the way visas are handled.

“There is no process to appeal and there is nothing you can do,” Liu said.

People have been delayed in entering the United States for no reason, he said.

“You just don’t know when you’ll get your visa,” Liu said. “You just have to wait, and that is very difficult.”

Liu said international students are now afraid to go home, adding there are many students who wish to study in the United States who are still in China.

“America should be an example on how to treat people fairly, and right now we don’t see that,” he said.

International students are members of their community, and to deny them their rights as members of that community is wrong, Liu said.

“There isn’t much outcry about ethnic profiling, and I don’t think that is right,” he said.

According to the ISU Fact Book, 2,580 members of the Iowa State student population are from a country other than the United States. Six hundred and sixty of them are from the People’s Republic of China.

Liu said China sends the largest number of students abroad.

A majority of students forced to stay in China when they try to return to the United States must do so because their visas are not being renewed, he said.

Dennis Peterson, director of International Education Services, said he wasn’t surprised to hear about the Yale-sponsored petition. There are other organizations in Washington D.C. that are concerned with this same problem, he said.

“The idea of somehow balancing security issues with visiting scholars needs to be addressed,” Peterson said.

He said International Education Services has e-mailed each international student enrolled at Iowa State asking them if traveling home is really necessary.

“People are without information and they are just stranded,” Peterson said.

Peterson said the university can’t do much to help students get back into the country once they leave Iowa State.

The visa is in the hands of someone in Washington D.C., he said. There is no typical time period for a visa to be returned.

“Some take a couple of weeks and some take months,” Peterson said.

Yongqiang Huang, ISU graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, said he doesn’t know if he’ll have trouble with his visa when he goes home.

“You need to be able to check the status of your visa,” Huang said. “I don’t understand why it takes so long.”