ISSO Launching New Immigration System for Students

in Fall 2024 Workshops
October 3rd, 2023

The International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO) is launching a new system to manage all international student documents and immigration processing. The new ISSOPortal will allow students to securely upload documents and to initiate and track requests for immigration processing like travel signatures CPT, OPT, extensions etc. online through a single portal.

ISSOPortal is scheduled to go live on November 20th, 2023!

There will be a system cutover period when ISSO will be not be able to process any immigration requests. Students must submit all processing requests by Monday, November 6th at 5pm or they will need to wait until after the system launches.

This means the following students should submit completed requests to ISSO ASAP:

  • student planning on travelling outside of the US over the Thanksgiving break who need a travel signature,
  • students requiring any ISSO immigration processing before November 20th, and
  • students graduating in January 2024 looking to apply for OPT in November

In addition, the ISSO will be closed Friday, November 10th in observation of Veterans’ Day. From Monday, November 13th through Friday, November 18th the ISSO lobby will be open from 2-5pm each day to sign immigration documents for travel. We will have in-person and virtual advisor-on-call each day that week from 2-5pm to answer basic questions while we migrate data and train on the new system.

Once the ISSOPortal is live, international students will:

  • Access the new ISSS portal using your BU login
  • Submit all immigration requests through ISSS
  • View request tracking in ISSS
  • Upload and retrieve documents in ISSS (including immigration documents)
  • Interact with ISSO via ISSS going forward

Please watch your email inboxes for details in the next few weeks as we prepare for launch.