Department Of State Adopts Final Rule On Automatic Visa Revalidation

Effective August 18, 2003, The Department of State has adopting as final an interim rule published in the Federal Register on March 7, 2002, amending the regulation pertaining to Automatic Visa Revalidation.

The rule was proposed in order to allow increased screening of visa applicants, in light of the Sept 11 attacks. The rule limits the accessibility of automatic revalidation and is no longer available to those applying for a new visa while traveling temporarily to an area covered by the automatic revalidation privilege. It is also no longer available to nationals of countries listed as state sponsors of terrorism.

According to the federal register, officials believe the new limitations would protect against the possibility that a visa applicant will be found ineligible but will have returned to the United States using the automatic revalidation privilege while the application was pending.

The DOS said it received 300 comments on the proposed rule, though “half or more… were verbatim in full or in part with a sample proposed response that circulated through the foreign student community,” most commonly complaining that the rule was unfair or inconvenient.

In response, the Department said automatic revalidation is a privilege, not a right, and while the provision was “intended primarily to recognize that persons lawfully in the United States may have occasion to cross into and out of Canada or Mexico for brief, casual visits,” but that it regrettably “became a vehicle for aliens whose visas had expired and who wanted to travel to more distant countries not within the scope of the automatic revalidation regulation,” concluding, “this was not the original intent of the regulation.”