MCLC: US State Dept intervenes (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Cai, Rong <rcai at emory.edu>
Subject: US State Dept intervenes (1)
*************************************************************

While we're on the subject, here is the latest news from the State
Department, part of press conference with Victoria Nuland, a State
Department spokesperson.

Rong

==============================================================

Source: US Department of State (5/24/12):
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/05/190847.htm#CHINA

Cai Rong

QUESTION: On China, you must have heard the new State Department directive
to the Confucius Institute in the U.S. Could you explain to us, what is
the purpose of this new directive?

MS. NULAND: Well, first of all, let me say that, as you know, the U.S.
greatly values its people-to-people exchange with China. This was one of
the centerpieces of the Secretary¹s participation in the Strategic and
Economic Dialogue. She had a separate people-to-people exchange with State
Councilor Liu and they got a chance to meet some American students and
some Chinese students, and it was a great event.

This is also not about the Confucius Institutes themselves. It is simply
about whether the right visa status was applied in these cases. When you
have a J-1 education visa, there are two categories. There are J-1 visas
if you are in kindergarten through high school, and there is a different
category of J-1 visas if you are at university.

And there was some muddling and messing up, so ­ in these cases ­ so we¹re
going to sort these out. Nobody¹s going to have to leave the country. It¹s
all going to get cleared up. But there was some confusion on the front
end, so we¹re going to fix it.

QUESTION: But in the directive, it said on all the current affected
exchange visitors, they have to leave before June 30 this year. Is that
the case?

MS. NULAND: My understanding is that we¹re going to do our best to fix
this without having anybody have to leave.

QUESTION: And finally --

MS. NULAND: That is my understanding.

QUESTION: -- are you concerned about the Confucius Institute¹s expansion
in the U.S. as the --

MS. NULAND: Are we concerned about?

QUESTION: The Confucius Institute¹s expansion in the U.S. as the strongest
Chinese soft power?

MS. NULAND: No. This is something that we support. It¹s part of the
people-to-people understanding. We just want to make sure that the visa
categories are correct.

Okay.

QUESTION: Can you speak to the timing of why now? Was it ­ was that in
conjunction to this problem being across all of the Confucius Institutes,
the J-1 confusion?

MS. NULAND: I can¹t speak to why this came up now. I think that we ­ as I
understood it this morning, we became aware that this wasn¹t just one case
or two cases, that there was a ­ sort of a mess-up in the processing in
general. So we need to fix that.

QUESTION: What was the mess-up?

QUESTION: Can you characterize the mess-up? Yeah.

MS. NULAND: That in fact, folks who are participating and teaching in
programs that were K-12 were given university-style J-1s, and the other
way around.

QUESTION: So --

QUESTION: And whose problem with that?

MS. NULAND: I can¹t speak to how the mess-up occurred, but we¹re going to
fix it.

QUESTION: Well, who issues the visas? I mean, it¹s ­ the State Department
issues visas, right?

MS. NULAND: Right. So whether there was some confusion on the front end
with the sponsors as to which programs individual teachers were being
brought for, or whether there was some changing after they arrived, I
really can¹t speak to that. But we¹re going to clean it up so that
everybody¹s in the right visa category.

QUESTION: So you --

QUESTION: You don¹t expect anyone to have to leave the country?

MS. NULAND: My understanding was we¹re going to do our best to fix this so
that nobody has to leave.

QUESTION: And just so we¹re clear, you don¹t think, then, that the mistake
was on the State Department¹s end? Do you think it¹s possible that it was
on the end of the people who applied or the intermediaries?

MS. NULAND: I just can¹t speak to that, and I can¹t speak to whether this
was uniform in any way or whether there were various problems.

QUESTION: And you can¹t speak to it because you don¹t know --

MS. NULAND: Correct.

QUESTION: -- or because you know and you don¹t want to say?

MS. NULAND: Because we have to investigate it and figure it out.

Okay.

QUESTION: Can you talk about how many visas were impacted by the problem?

MS. NULAND: I don¹t have that either.

QUESTION: Okay.

QUESTION: May I ask you for what kind of meetings, when you say that you
are working on this issue? I heard that some of the Confucius Institutions
have come and had meetings with the assistant secretary already talking
about this. So could you tell us more about what kind of works has been
doing to avoid ­ make sure people don¹t have to leave the country by the
end of June?
MS. NULAND: Yeah. My understanding is that at the current moment, we¹re
trying to size the problem, we¹re trying to figure out how many people are
affected, and then we¹re going to ­ and we¹re in the process of reissuing
instructions that are a little bit clearer and a little bit more easy to
manage. Let¹s put it that way.

QUESTION: Okay. And may I also say that we know that in the past couple of
months, a few members in the Congress expressed their dissatisfaction and
question about the operation of Confucius Institutes in the U.S. So I
wonder, when you were doing this ­ before you released this direction
about the J-1 visa, did you have any contact with those members in the
Congress?

MS. NULAND: Well, I¹m sure that, as we always do on all matters, we¹re in
dialogue with Congress. But this is a matter not about any of that; it¹s a
matter about whether people are in the right visa category for where they
are teaching.
Please.