The embassy in Madrid has no problem with A’s age of 14. We know this because A was there on Friday and they told her so. They won’t, however, issue a J-1 exchange visa unless she has a DS2019 form completed by the sponsoring agency, which is Rotary. That application has to be completed through the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which is under US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The application must be completed online, and Rotary cannot complete it because that’s where the birthdate field is limited to dates indicating that the applicant is over 15 years old. If the entry doesn’t fit the predefined parameters, you can’t go any farther on the form.
If the US embassy in Madrid will issue the visa, the age limit must not be a deal breaker. She is not a 17-year-old son of a Baath Party loyalist, she’s a 14-year-old Spanish girl from a nice Catholic family. It seems logical that the next step is finding a way to manually override that field, perhaps with the assistance from someone at Immigration? From a local representative in Congress? I have a tenuous connection there and will see about using it because unless the people making this decision find a Web site that says, “Here’s how to get around the age limit on the DS2019 through SEVIS,” I don’t think we’re going to get a favorable answer.
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