When your PhD depends on a VISA stamp

Many Moroccan PhD (and sometimes Masters) students have to go do parts of their thesis abroad in the frame of collaborations with other universities (mainly European). It is mostly a crutial phase for the advancement of their work as almost all the technical and analytical parts are available in these institutions.
All students who have stayings in countries where VISA is required from Moroccan citizens, endure the same struggle in preparing all the required papers, paying the non-refundable fees, the long waiting and finally getting (or not) the VISA approval to be able to make peacefully their staying abroad and try to advance in their thesis.
The dilemma here is when applying for a VISA becomes such a stressful procedure and an obstacle in meeting in time your PhD project deadlines and milestones; when you start worrying about whether or not you will be able to finish someday your PhD because you are not able to go to the other country where you have a collaboration already set up, free available instrumentation and other lateral opportunities, just because of bureaucracy issues.
Sometimes, a delay in delivering a VISA can compromise a student's work because host labs availability is limited, and host researchers schedule is tight, not to mention all the prejudice VISA delivering delays may cause to the student's research in a competitive area such as Academia.

This issue leads us to two points; the first is typically technical and could be resolved by treating students' VISA applications as a priority - as letters of invitation from host labs usually precise the stayings dates. The second is rather a questionning of the dependence of national labs on international ones. It is a tricky subject, as from one part, if we consider the state of Geoscience research labs in Morocco, we could be thinking "How is it even conceivable running PhD programs?", apart from field-based work, neither national projects nor the internal structure can cover basic geochemistry or SEM analyses. Instrumentation is found in special institutions who often do not collaborate much with universities, and besides, are extremely expensive. On the other hand, collaborations are always good when it comes to expertise transfer and exchange, and it helps our students to become more flexible, polyvalent and easily adapting themselves to new work and life environments.
The problem raises when students, in a time of despair, lack of scholarchip, and/or stress & worry about their work advancement, choose to go abroad on their personal charge (which is often a big sacrifice considering the difference of economic levels between the host country and country of origin), but face either painful VISA bureaucracy or if they're successful to get to the host country, suffer from deception for not getting enough support and attention. Which is another problem that needs probably another article.

This was the thought of the day. Good luck to all Moroccan PhD students, and others worldwide who identified themselves in this topic. Stay strong!