What are the requirements for student visas?

[jmowreader]

By now we all know the far right's current argument against the refugee program: a terrorist might slip through the cracks.

Considering just how deep those cracks really are - 18 to 24 months of investigation, many interviews, plenty of training to help the refugee assimilate into his or her new land, and no guarantee that after you get through all that you won't be sent to a country you don't even want to bomb - it doesn't appear, at least to me, that the Refugee Program is the best way to infiltrate terrorists into a targeted country.

Then I started thinking: Why couldn't this week's Number Two Man at Al Qaeda, the Deputy Commander of Daesh for Foreign Infiltration, or whoever else is running terrorists this week just pick a handful of people who aren't on anyone's radar screen and enroll them in a community college in the area they want to hit? Community colleges like having foreign students and sending a person to live in the area near the target would let them do long-term reconnaissance of it.

[uppityperson]

1. What about plain tourist visas too?

[jmowreader]

2. Plain tourists don't stay as long as students do

That's the advantage of the student visa over the tourist visa: they have longer on the ground to develop a plan of attack.

[Lancero]

4. You'd be suprised at just how long their visa's would allow them to stay in country though.

For Syrians, the maximum duration they can stay in the US on a B-1 visa would be 24 months.

Most nations, the limit is 120 months.

Staying that long on a tourist visa would be suspicious ofc, but still... The visa is valid for 2 years.

[Recursion]

5. We're just about the only country that doesn't actually check how long people stay

We don't have passport control on exit; we have no idea when people leave the country. It's kind of appalling.

[Lancero]

3. The M line visa's requirements are pretty simple...

And we issue just under 500k of those a year.

The J line's are a bit more in depth. Haven't found exact numbers for this one though, just that the number of holders is "more then 170k"

Honestly though, I think that they'd have better odds trying to swing a B visa.