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Muhammad and his sister waited patiently in April at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, for their visa interviews to determine whether they would be able to study together at California’s Minerva University during the fall semester. 

In 2024, Muhammad, who is only using his first name for safety reasons, applied twice for a visa to attend Mississippi State University. Both visa applications were denied. That same year, he was also accepted into New York University Shanghai, the University of Southern Mississippi, Philadelphia’s Temple University, and the University of New Hampshire, though he ultimately decided not to pursue visa interviews for those schools. 

He was admitted to Minerva University in this April, which is how he found himself in Karachi pursuing his third costly attempt to secure a student visa.   

Muhammad’s experience highlights a larger pattern: Student visa processes can be unpredictable and costly, particularly for young people from countries with limited travel freedom. 

The U.S. State Department, the agency responsible for granting visas to the U.S., declined to comment. 

Significant deterrents 

To obtain a student visa in the U.S., applicants must be accepted to a school and submit financial documents to show they can cover tuition and living expenses. Applicants must then attend an in-person interview at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate, a process that can take weeks or even months to schedule, depending on appointment availability. The visa itself costs $185, though families often face additional expenses for travel, document preparation, and legal help. Largely due to “predetermined bias,” people seeking visas from countries such as Pakistan, Algeria, and Nigeria frequently face high rejection rates and more scrutiny.

The U.S. government’s new $250 visa integrity fee, announced as part of President Donald Trump’s major domestic policy law, is just the latest example of how wealthy nations turn mobility into revenue. The visa integrity fee, which took effect on Oct. 1, is a new $250 surcharge that the U.S. government will add to existing visa costs for most nonimmigrant visa types, including student (F-1), tourist, and work visas. Denied visas mean families such as Muhammad’s pay the fees required to obtain the visa with no refund, adding to a steep financial burden in a country where the average monthly salary hovers around $292. For students from countries with weaker passports, such as Pakistan, the price of opportunity continues to rise. 

A passport’s strength is determined by its accessibility, or how many countries a citizen can visit without requiring a visa in advance. The more visa-free access a country has, the “stronger” its passport. The more restrictions, the “weaker” the passport. Therefore, the ability to travel, study, and plan a future is increasingly determined not by ambition or academic merit, but by geopolitics, nationality, income, and where a person was born. 

According to the Henley Passport Index, which ranks countries based on how many destinations their citizens can access without a prior visa, Pakistan is currently ranked 103rd—one of the lowest in the world. This lack of passport mobility adds additional challenges for students such as Muhammad who are trying to study abroad. 

At Minerva where Muhammad is a student, the university’s curriculum begins with students spending their first year in San Francisco at the main campus, followed by Tokyo in their second year. In their third and fourth years, students rotate through cities that change annually, including Berlin; Buenos Aires; Hyderabad, India; and Taipei, Taiwan.

Muhammad told Prism that some international freshmen at Minerva who were able to secure a U.S. visa began their first semester in Buenos Aires, while upperclassmen who couldn’t obtain their visa for their next destination remained at Minerva, limiting their participation in the university’s global program that requires students to study in a different country each year. 

At his first interview for a visa that was ultimately rejected, Muhammad received a yellow 221(g) slip, a notice that his visa case required additional administrative processing rather than outright denial. 

His adviser through EducationUSA, the State Department’s network of international student advising centers, encouraged him to keep checking the embassy website for any interview openings to apply again. Embassies have a limited number of daily slots that can fill up quickly, especially in high-demand countries. Whether applicants need to rebook a slot or wait for the consulate to contact them depends on the specific embassy’s procedures. 

At his second interview, the State Department issued Muhammad a white 221(g) slip, signaling the embassy required additional review or documentation before it could make a final decision. 

The color-coded slips are not explained or detailed anywhere on the State Department’s website. However, their meanings are widely interpreted through documentation shared by applicants and guidance circulated on immigration law blogs. The lack of clarity leaves students navigating a system that can feel opaque and unpredictable. 

“I was really devastated,” Muhammad said. “I told my family I couldn’t get the visa, and again, the one-year waitlist [process began]. I kept checking again and again and again, but unfortunately, I could not find another visa appointment.” 

For some applicants, typically from countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), travel to the U.S. is far easier. Citizens of these mainly European countries can apply for an Electronic System for Travel Authorization and receive approval in as little as 72 hours. The automated system determines VWP eligibility in part by ascertaining whether the traveler poses any law enforcement or security risks.

For others, such as Muhammad, the visa process is lengthy, costly, and uncertain. Muhammad said his parents paid the $185 nonrefundable visa application fee three times, totaling $555—plus an additional $185 for his sister’s, for a total of $740. For his third visa interview, Muhammad and his sister had to travel more than 875 miles from Islamabad to Karachi, which adds to the total cost and illustrates how time-consuming the student visa process can be for some applicants. Given the average salary in their home country, many Pakistani families simply cannot afford repeated visa fees without significant sacrifice. 

“Visa fees, along with the uncertainty and stress of the interviewing process, can be significant deterrents,” said Rajika Bhandari, senior adviser at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which brings together American college and university chancellors and presidents to increase public understanding of how immigration policies and practices impact students. “For families already stretching tuition and living costs, these fees add a financial burden that can tip the scales toward more accessible Anglophone destinations where visa systems are perceived as more predictable and welcoming.” 

But the hurdles students face are not only financial; they are also rooted in structural and social biases embedded in the visa system.

Discrimination abounds 

According to immigration attorney Julia Toro, the process for obtaining a visa to the U.S. is highly discriminatory.  

“There is racial, social, and economic discrimination as well as discrimination based on class, tribal, or clan status,” Toro said. “There is no due process for the U.S. State Department because they can deny a visa, and the applicant has no right to appeal the denial.”

The attorney also noted that government officials in the U.S. are making determinations based on an applicant’s country of origin, class, and employment status. The U.S. government presumes that citizens from wealthier countries with large bank accounts and permanent jobs will return to their home countries. “The State Department is worried about people getting the visa and overstaying illegally,” Toro explained. “They discriminate by presuming people who are from less developed countries would abuse the visa and overstay.”

While the U.S. earns billions in visa fees each year, it is far from the only Western country profiting from this system. Across Europe and the United Kingdom, visa revenues and rejection fees are reliable sources of income, often at the expense of poorer applicants. 

Marta Foresti, founder of LAGO Collective, a research and arts collective focused on migration, culture, and the arts, said the imbalance experienced by students from certain countries is structural. 

“So the effects of the discrimination has got a lot harsher because what you’re building in is already a very unequal system for some countries,” Foresti said. “Pakistan, Nigeria, and others are clear examples of rejection rates being particularly high and, of course, the impact of the increased fees, which is just one expense before you start calculating everything else.” 

According to 2024 State Department data on U.S. visa rejections, Pakistan’s adjusted refusal rate for nonimmigrant visas for short-term business or tourism was 45.65%, while Nigeria’s was 46.51%.  

While waiting in line for his last interview, Muhammad noticed a Pakistani man ahead of him struggling to speak English. The visa officer asked the man how many siblings he had. The man initially said he had no siblings, but eventually corrected himself, saying he had one brother and one sister. The officer denied his application. 

Muhammad’s observation highlighted how visa interviews can hinge on small details and the applicant’s ability to navigate a stressful process under pressure. Sometimes minor misunderstandings have major consequences. 

Research from the residence and citizenship planning firm Henley & Partners shows that students from certain African and Global South countries face disproportionately high refusal rates when compared with peers from wealthier countries. For example, in 2024, the Gambia’s refusal rate was 66.03%, Kenya’s was 63.32%, and Senegal’s was 74.65%, according to State Department data. Visa barriers also reflect broader global inequities. 

According to a 2024 State Department report, the agency collected $5.9 billion in consular fees, accounting for 57% of its total revenue. Together with other sources such as administrative fees, total revenue earned reached $9.2 billion, or 89% of the department’s income. These numbers underscore how deeply the U.S. visa system relies on revenue generated from applicants, many of whom come from countries with high refusal rates and limited financial resources. This is because when visas are denied, applicants still absorb the cost of the nonrefundable fees, a structure that burdens people from the Global South.

After his initial two visa rejections and a semester at a private research university in Islamabad, Muhammad and his sister finally secured their visas and were able to enroll at Minerva together in August. 

But Muhammad’s experience is only one part of a much larger story, one where every obstacle risks pushing academic talent away. 

“Their loss is really our loss” 

In 2015, Angel Contreras Cruz, then 33, left his home in Oaxaca, Mexico, to come to the U.S. He originally planned to stay for five months to study English and then finish his master’s thesis back home. But shortly after arriving in Portland, Oregon, he met the woman who would eventually become his wife. The couple began dating, and as their relationship grew, Contreras Cruz realized the only way to stay in the U.S. while continuing on his academic path was to pursue a Ph.D. in the U.S., a move that would also allow him to receive government funding from Mexico and improve his chances of finding a job after graduation. 

“It was kind of like a combination of both personal and professional goals,” Contreras Cruz said. “But to be honest, if I wouldn’t have met my wife, I’d probably be living in Mexico today.”

Contreras Cruz described the visa process as both difficult and expensive. For him, even an F-1 student visa, typically considered less complex than a work or tourist visa, required extensive documentation and financial proof. 

As part of this process, an I-20 form is issued by the U.S. university, certifying a student’s enrollment and assessing their financials as a way of showing whether a student can cover tuition and living expenses for a year.

Contreras Cruz said he did not have the full amount required when he applied, which made the process even more challenging. 

Contreras Cruz was only able to provide about a portion of the funds the school required. But he was fortunate: He obtained a scholarship that helped the school approve his original F-1 visa, allowing him to begin his studies in the U.S.

In the years since, Contreras Cruz has applied for three different F-1 student visas, participated in three different work authorization programs that allow international students to gain work experience related to their academic program, and applied for an employment-based green card. Now, to increase the likelihood that he secures permanent residency, he is preparing an EB-1A visa application for individuals with extraordinary ability. Contreras Cruz’s current status is “F-1 STEM OPT,” the temporary work authorization granted to international science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates. His status is set to expire in June 2027, which means that if he doesn’t receive a green card or work visa sponsor by then, he’ll be forced to return to Mexico. 

The nearly 11 years that Contreras Cruz has spent in the U.S. have required a mountain of paperwork and what he estimates to be about $25,000 in fees and other costs. Reflecting on the process, Contreras Cruz told Prism that for applicants from wealthy countries, the process is far easier because their funding is rarely questioned. Contreras Cruz said that applicants from wealthier countries are often sponsored by their government or universities, which means their expenses are covered.

Applicants without this assistance face additional costs associated with their visa, including flights to their home countries to reapply for visas and related expenses, such as meals and lodging. After graduation, when he had to apply for a work authorization program related to his field of study, Contreras Cruz said he paid nearly $500 for his work permit, only to face long processing times. Documents that should take three months sometimes took six or seven.

To cover the additional fees required to expedite his application, Contreras Cruz launched a GoFundMe last year, raising about $1,700 to speed up the processing of his work permit. If the permit was not processed in a timely manner, Contreras Cruz could not legally work in the U.S. Ultimately, the GoFundMe was successful.

“They are basically forcing applicants to go to the premium processing option, which means you need to spend more money in order to secure a work permit or visa,” Contreras Cruz explained. 

Now pursuing his green card, Contreras Cruz said the application fees, coupled with attorney’s fees, make the process “really expensive,” and he’s just starting out. He’s paid $8,000 thus far, with no guarantee that it will lead to a green card. Overall, he estimated that he’ll spend around $20,000 in hopes of adjusting his status. 

Green card costs in 2025 can be significant, typically ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 for family-based applications and $2,000 to $5,000 or more for employment-based applications, depending on whether premium processing is involved. These figures can climb even further when accounting for additional expenses beyond U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services filing fees, including attorney fees, premium processing, travel, document preparation costs, and more. And during the application process, immigrants such as Contreras Cruz have no idea whether their investment will even lead to a visa. 

Uncertainty has been a constant issue during Contreras Cruz’s time in the U.S., affecting everything from his ability to plan for the future to daily decisions. He said the limbo surrounding his immigration status “alters everything,” including his peace of mind, work eligibility, and even his ability to do basic financial planning. 

Making his situation more challenging is the political landscape in the U.S. under the Trump administration. 

After returning from a trip to Mexico, for example, Contreras Cruz faced a tense reentry at the Portland airport, where an immigration officer detained him for two hours and questioned his visa.

You need to live with different scenarios because of that uncertainty; it’s always here for us as immigrants.

Angel Contreras Cruz, U.S. Visa holder from mexico

“My family was waiting for me outside the airport, and I couldn’t communicate with them because [agents] didn’t allow it,” Contreras Cruz said. “It was a very difficult situation.” 

Since January, Trump has lodged a war against immigrant communities in the U.S., with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection carrying out indiscriminate raids in Latinx communities nationwide—apprehending not just the undocumented, but immigrants with various statuses that allow them to lawfully reside in the U.S. This includes the recent case of a college student who was deported to Honduras when flying from Boston to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. Federal immigration agencies have even detained Latinos who are American citizens. 

As impossible as it may be, Contreras Cruz said he does his best to expect the unexpected. “I have Plan A to continue here, but also a Plan B [to] be ready to leave whenever it is needed,” he said. “So you need to live with different scenarios because of that uncertainty; it’s always here for us as immigrants.”

Mariam Feldblum, co-founder, president, and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance, told Prism that the discrimination and sometimes insurmountable challenges that the U.S. puts in the way of international students have broader consequences for the nation.  

“We sometimes think about what’s the loss to the international student,” Feldblum said, “but their loss is really our loss.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor