WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) – The visa applications of hundreds of international students seeking to work in the United States this summer are languishing at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, where increased processing times have left students stranded and university leaders struggling with the fallout.

Students have written petitions and panicked letters to some of the top universities in the country as their internship start dates have come and gone with no word from the federal government.

Recent graduates of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism are pushing back start dates for internships and relying on their parents for day-to-day expenses.

Students at Princeton have had job offers rescinded.

At Dartmouth College, students reported losing money they spent for housing and flights to live and work in other states.

At Yale, students scrambled to enroll in a newly created course that would allow the university to approve their summer employment.

“Every morning I wake up with anxiety, wondering what am I going to do today when I’m supposed to be working,” said Yaling Jiang, 26, a student from China and recent graduate of Columbia’s journalism school, who was supposed to start an internship last Monday (June 10) at a trade publication run by The Financial Times.

Such a delay, college leaders suggest, reflects increasing hurdles international students have faced studying and working in the country under the Trump administration.

Last year, the administration sought to crack down on students who overstayed their visas, a policy that is under a court injunction.

Jiang is among those awaiting work authorisation under a program called Optional Practical Training, which allows international students legally attending school to work for up to a year in a field related to their studies.

They can apply for the authorisation only 90 days before they are scheduled to start a job or complete their degree.

In prior years, the maximum wait time was 90 days.

This year, Citizenship and Immigration Services is projecting a lag of up to five months, which an agency official said was a result of “a surge in employment authorisation requests” that had created a “small backlog.”

The agency said in a statement that it had “implemented a plan to address this and return to standard processing times soon.”

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