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I am a professor at an American university, and I regularly invite visitors to campus for short-term visits to give seminar, colloquium, or conference talks. Many of these visitors are not US citizens or permanent residents.

Our bureaucracy is flexing its muscles; now I am being asked to ask visitors to provide a copy of their visa or I-94 for approval by HR.

This rule strikes me as overly burdensome, certainly in excess of what I've been asked to do when visiting universities abroad.

Is such a rule commonplace, reasonable, and/or required by the government? And are non-Americans accustomed to doing this when visiting universities in the US?

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  • Are you receiving moneys to host?
    – Thomas Schwarz
    Commented Aug 25, 2023 at 12:22
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    Under the Visa Waiver Program, nationals of 40 countries can enter the US for up to 90 days "for business or tourism". A quick search did not turn up whether academic presentations are covered under "business" (but I have regularly attended conferences under VWP, and the CBP people did not mind). Thus, your HR department should not expect everyone to have a visa. I-94, of course, but this your visitors will only get after they have already entered the country, so it's not quite clear what "approval" HR is thinking of.
    – Stephan Kolassa
    Commented Aug 25, 2023 at 12:29
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    Usually we pay the visitors' travel expenses, and occasionally an honorarium. Also, this message got passed down by a junior administrator, and it is possible they misunderstood what HR was telling them.
    – academic
    Commented Aug 25, 2023 at 12:42
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    This is over reaching. If CPB lets them into the country they will have one or the other. They are not employees, even if some expenses are reimbursed. Perhaps there has been some misunderstood incident somewhere that has led them there…
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Aug 25, 2023 at 12:42
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    Please note reimbursement issues in the question - the IRS does have requirements if visitors are reimbursed for expenses, and further requirements if visitors are actually paid. It is possible that your university has a system for payment that is unable (i.e. has not been programmed) to have a separate category for people who are receiving reimbursement and not payment for services and treats all its payees as receiving payment for services.
    – Alexander Woo
    Commented Aug 25, 2023 at 22:13

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