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 "It was scary," Hamedi Rad, a chemical engineering graduate
student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said of
his late-night arrival in Chicago, where he declared the funds to
airport customs officials. "I've never carried that much money
before. I was extremely nervous."
Hamedi Rad's experience is by no means unheard of among many of the
thousands of high-achieving, mostly middle-class young Iranians who
are coming to the United States to study in increasing numbers
despite U.S. and international sanctions on their homeland.
After gaining admission, they must navigate a way around sanctions
on Iranian banks that make direct legal wire transfers to the West a
practical impossibility, impeding the students' ability to pay
tuition or transfer money for living expenses. Obtaining a U.S. visa
adds to the logistical hurdles and a depreciated Iranian rial means
money can be tight.
The hardships facing Iranian students in the United States and
elsewhere were spotlighted after a clause aimed at aiding them
appeared in a landmark deal struck last month between Iran and world
powers on curbing its nuclear program.
"Many students are suffering," said Tony Akhlaghi, who has served as
faculty adviser to a Persian cultural club at Bellevue College,
outside of Seattle. "They cannot get money from home, and the price
of the dollar makes things very hard."
Under the Nov. 24 interim agreement, Iran agreed to halt its
most sensitive nuclear activity in return for a 6-month respite from
some of the sanctions that have crippled its economy.
As part of the bargain, the United States and its partners agreed to
open up a channel between Iranian and foreign banks to enable
"direct tuition payments to universities and colleges for Iranian
students studying abroad."
At the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, more than 51,000
Iranians were studying in the United States, far more students than
from any other nation, according to figures provided by the
Institute of International Education (IIE).
With relations between the countries in a deep freeze, that figure
fell precipitously to a low of fewer than 1,700 by 1999. Since then,
Iranian students have been steadily returning to the United States,
the IIE reports.
This year, 8,744 Iranians are in the United States on student visas,
more than at any time since the late 1980s. Most are graduate
students, many focusing on math and science, who are more likely
than undergraduates to receive stipends covering a portion of their
tuition and living expenses.
FINANCIAL DURESS
But the return of Iranian students has not come without hiccups.
Students must travel out of Iran to acquire a visa because
Washington has no embassy in Tehran. In Hamedi Rad's case, it
entailed traveling twice to Dubai, waiting 111 days and arriving at
school a month late.
Additionally, the Iranian rial lost about two-thirds of its value
against the U.S. dollar over the 18 months to late 2012, effectively
wiping out years of Iranian family savings. It has since recovered
some ground and stabilized.
Last month's nuclear deal offers the potential for tangible help for
Iranian students, authorizing $400 million in state assets frozen
abroad to be used for tuition payments to foreign colleges and
universities over the six-month period, according to a White House
fact sheet.
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Precisely how, when and perhaps even whether that money will be
spent will be the subject of discussions this week in Vienna, when
Iran and major powers begin talking about how to implement the
accord, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
Iranian students are hopeful the deal will help ease their woes,
although it was not immediately clear that it would help students
already in the United States to transfer private funds to pay for
their educations.
The Iranian Interests Section in the Pakistani embassy in Washington
did not immediately respond to questions by Reuters.
Saghi Modjtabai, executive director of the Public Affairs Alliance
of Iranian Americans, said that in the middle of last year her group
began hearing from financially strapped students who were late on
tuition payments and struggling to pay for essentials like food and
rent.
After surveying nearly 1,000 Iranian students in the United States,
her group found over 90 percent were in financial difficulty. Her
group and the IIE last spring raised over $100,000 and negotiated
tuition and meal plan deals with schools across the country for 67
students on the cusp of attaining their degrees.
Among those given support was Ali Samadian, a petroleum engineering
graduate student at Texas Tech University, who said in a thank-you
letter that without the help he would have been forced to leave the
country short of completing his master's degree.
"I was financially in trouble and I was so worried that it was also
affecting my performance at school," he wrote. "But now that I have
your generous support I feel relieved and I can focus on my
education as effectively as possible."
Still, many more students were left without needed assistance,
Modjtabai said. Some dropped out and returned home, while others may
have found work beyond what the terms of their student visas allow.
"I continue to get email from students who are back in the same
place in terms of their financial hardship," she said.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Laila
Kearney in San Francisco and Dana Feldman in Los Angeles)
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