After several years, the Treasury Department's Office of Assets Control (OFAC), the agency that administers sanctions by the United States against Iran, has released a regulation that makes it clear that most Iranian visa applicants are not subject to the sanctions.  This is a dramatic reversal of recent interpretations by the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service that indicated not only that many applications for visas would now be denied, but that the INS might actually proceed with revoking visas for certain Iranians. The new regulation should put an end to any move in this direction since the INS and State Department must defer to OFAC regulations.

The new regulations were published in the Federal Register at 64 FR 20168 and contain the following key language:

Section 560.505 Importation of certain Iranian-origin services authorized; activities related to certain visa categories authorized.

(a)     The importation of Iranian-origin services into the United

(b)     Persons otherwise qualified for a non-immigrant visa under categories A-3 and G-5 (attendants, servants and personal employees of aliens in the United States on diplomatic status), D (crewmen), F (students), I (information media representatives), J (exchange visitors), M (non-academic students), O and P (aliens with extraordinary ability, athletes, artists and entertainers), Q (international cultural exchange visitors), R (religious workers), or S (witnesses) are authorized to carry out in the United States those activities for which such a visa has been ranted by the U.S. State Department.

(c)     Persons otherwise qualified for a visa under categories E-2 (treaty investor), H-1b (temporary worker), or L (intra-company transferee) and all immigrant visa categories are authorized to carry out in the United States those activities for which such a visa has been granted by the US State Department, provided that the persons are not coming to the United States to work as an agent, employee or contractor of the Government of Iran or a business entity or other organization in Iran.

The only types of visa applicants that now seem to be subject to sanctions are employees of the government of Iran or Iranian employers. Presumably, this would only cover a small group of applicants.

Recent anecdotal evidence indicates that the consular officers are either not yet aware of the OFAC regulations or are ignoring them. Iranian nationals denied visas based on the sanctions who are affected by the OFAC regulations will either need to bring them to the attention of the consulate or seek an advisory opinion from the State Department's Visa Office. While consular opinions cannot be overturned based on factual determinations, the Visa Office does have power to overturn incorrect interpretations of the law.

For some historical perspective on this issue, readers may want to see the September 1998 entry in our Documents Collection on our web site at http://www.visalaw.com/docs/.