Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Yale University President Richard Levin said he helped persuade the school's most powerful alumnus to ease student visa restrictions imposed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Levin is among U.S. college presidents, including the leaders of Harvard and Princeton universities and Dartmouth College, who are pushing George W. Bush, Yale Class of '68, to improve the visa process for visiting scholars and make American schools more accessible to foreign students.

They made progress last week, when Bush said in a Jan. 5 speech to a meeting of more than 120 college presidents, ``We want young kids from around the world coming to our universities. It's in our national interest.''

It's a message Levin said he conveyed to Bush when the president traveled to Yale's New Haven, Connecticut, campus in May 2004 to celebrate the graduation of his daughter Barbara.

In the Georgian revival home Yale presidents have occupied since 1937, Levin said he told Bush that the number of foreign student applications to U.S. graduate schools declined 28 percent in 2004 from the previous year, and that some students had waited so long for a visa they had to defer enrollment or forego trips home for fear they couldn't easily return.

``I laid out the problem for him and explained that foreign students are an investment in our national security,'' Levin, an economist who has led Yale since 1993, said in an interview.

Economic Benefit

International students are an economic boon to universities. Financial aid can be limited and undergraduates tend to pay full tuition, said Ben DeWinter, Boston University provost for international programs. In 2004, they spent $13.3 billion to live and study in the U.S., according to the Institute of International Education in Washington.

Levin's efforts paid off. Two days later, Tom Ridge, then head of the U.S. Office of Homeland Security, called and said, ```You really got the president's attention, what can we do to help?''' Levin recalled. ``Then, they mobilized.''

Since Levin's meeting with Bush, it's become easier for foreign students and scholars to enter the U.S. on short notice and leave without re-applying for a visa. Chinese students can obtain a visa for 12 months instead of six.

About 85 percent of security checks -- which had taken months -- were resolved within two weeks. By the 2004-05 school year, the decline in applications from foreign students in the U.S. had narrowed to 5 percent, Levin said. He said he expects improvement again this year.

`Calibrating'

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to comment on what Levin and Bush discussed at Yale. She referred to the president's Jan. 5 remarks, when he said the administration is ``calibrating'' the balance between security and encouraging foreign students.

``I fully understand some of your frustrations, particularly when you say the balance wasn't actually calibrated well,'' Bush said to the college presidents.

Foreign students have been barred from holding most jobs, qualifying for in-state tuition after any period of residency or getting federal aid.

Bush pushed for tighter visa rules after the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Some attackers that flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon had entered the U.S. using student visas.

After the Patriot Act went fully into effect in the summer of 2003, new requirements included visa applicant interviews, leading to backlogs of several months at many U.S. embassies, and the fingerprinting of visitors.

Restrictions on Students

U.S. universities were asked to register all foreign students with a federal database known as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. Students are charged a $100 fee for the system.

Soon after new rules were imposed, groups including the American Association of Universities and business leaders began lobbying the administration and Congress for changes, Levin said.

Levin also was under pressure to make changes from students at Yale. One student who got married in his native China in 2003 couldn't get back into the U.S. for six months, while teaching and research assistants told the Yale Daily News they couldn't leave the U.S. to visit family or attend conferences for fear of being unable to return.

Students signed a petition in 2004 saying they wanted Yale to take a more active role to improve the issue, the Yale Daily News reported on Feb. 20, 2004.

The real breakthrough happened after Bush's visit to Yale, Levin said.

Shifting Agenda

Bush convened the meeting of college presidents to discuss ways of increasing the number of international students in the U.S. and encouraging more U.S. students to study abroad, said Dina Habib Powell, assistant U.S. secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs.

Jiangang Li, a post-doctoral student at the University of Maryland, has felt the shift. Chinese students waited as long as six months for U.S. visas after Sept. 11, Li said. Now they typically get them on the same day.

``I know many, many of my friends, when they went back to China to visit their families, then they spent like a month, or two months, or even more -- a half year -- to wait for a visa,' Li said. ``But things are getting better now.''

Full Freight Students

Some within Bush's own party disagree with loosening the rules.

``The universities' interest is in filling classrooms with students that are paying full freight,'' said Sam Stratman, spokesman for Representative Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican and chairman of the House International Relations Committee. ``There are broader interests at stake here, principally the security and the credibility of our visa system.''

Students' biggest contributions come after graduation, Levin said. One-third of the U.S.'s Nobel Prize winners were born outside of the country, Levin said, and many scientists and engineers are foreign nationals who were U.S.-educated. At Yale alone, 1,708 international students from 105 nations make up more than 15 percent of the student body.

``These are important investment issues for the U.S.,'' said Levin.

More Changes Expected

Visiting scholars need visas that are valid longer than a year, said Levin. He and the presidents of Stanford and Princeton universities wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week outlining the issue.

``The United States has to assert again that this is a land of opportunity, and we need to provide those opportunities,'' said Dartmouth College President James Wright in an interview.

Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who declined to comment for this story, has also spoken out on easing visa regulations.

``Let us do everything we can to send a clear signal that foreign students are welcome at Harvard and in America,'' Summers said in a June 9 speech to alumni at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school.

To contact the reporter on this story: Liz Willen in New York at ewillen@bloomberg.net; Paul Basken in Washington at pbasken@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 12, 2006 00:04 EST