Mahdi Lotfinezhad, a PhD student in electrical and computer engineering, is torn between two loves.
Three years into his degree, having completing a Masters in Canada, he must decide whether to finish or go back to Iran to be with his wife. For despite repeated applications, she has been consistently denied a visa.
“About six or seven months ago my wife went to apply for a visa. The reason we applied late is because we heard bad news about visa rejection cases. So we figure it we wait a bit the situation will get better. But that turned out not to be true and it turned out to be worse.”
The hurdles for international students from Iran were once limited to acceptance and funding for research. They now include international relations, and the problem for many Iranian graduate students is a combination of achieving visas for themselves and their loved ones.
Lotfinezhad illustrates the case of being caught in a global diplomatic struggle that is seemingly getting worse, as relations between the Iranian government and the international community continue to deteriorate.
Yaser Kerachian, another PhD engineering student at U of T, explained that student visas can normally be issued on a four-year basis, provided that requirements are met. But for many Iranian and Middle Eastern students, the four-year visa has been replaced with a visa that calls for annual renewal, annual reapplication, and an annual cost of about $100.
As a result, Iranian students studying in Canada have banded together to attempt to address concerns incoming overseas students might have. By establishing an online group, potential students in Iran can contact current students in Canada and assess the visa situation themselves.
“Between July and August we had between 20-30 emails a day, asking us questions about how to deal with this situation,” Kerachian said.
The visa rejection problem is not limited to U of T, either. The number of Iranian students attending Canadian universities is falling elsewhere as well. According to a recent report in the Windsor Star, the University of Windsor now has eight Iranian students where there were 20. Dalhousie University had 12 Iranian students denied entry into the country.
Calls seeking comment from the University of Toronto’s International Student Center, the Iranian embassy in Ottawa, and the Iran desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were not returned by deadline. The conclusion that many Iranian nationals seeking graduate degrees in Canada such as Kerachian have unfortunately come to, is that visa rejection is a systemic problem.
The deteriorating situation has been Canada’s relations with Iran. The dispute over Iran’s nuclear policy and confrontational posture with the international community is but a recent episode in a series of problems.
The shaky relations between the states were severely strained after Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was apparently tortured, raped, and killed in an Iranian prison in 2003. The Canadian government considers her death to have been a murder.
“Rates of rejection began to exponentially increase almost a year and a half ago and they are getting worse. After Zahra Kazemi’s case, this increased this rejection rate, especially for spouses. I think that, of course this is more a political issue,” said Lotfinezhad.
The situation spiraled downward further after Iranian-Canadian and former U of T professor Ramin Jahanbegloo was imprisoned in Iran on allegations of “relations with foreigners” and espionage. He was detained Tehran’s infamous Evin prison, as Kazemi had been, but was released in late August with some pessimism as to his future status.
For Lotfinezhad, though, there may be one way out of the dilemma-moving south.
“I have a friend who studied here for three years. He tried two or three times and he couldn’t bring his wife here. So he decided to do a wise thing and apply to a US university. So he got admitted and now he and his wife are enjoying a new life in the US,” he said.
