Insulting American visa process drives off talent

• Source: Global Times
• [21:53 March 17 2010]
• Comments

By Eric Fish

After waiting outside in nervous anticipation, my girlfriend finally emerged from the building that my eyes had been fixated on for hours.

I could tell instantly from the look on her face that the result was what we had hoped for. I quickly stood up and threw my arms around her and shared a long joyful embrace as a slight tear came to my eye.

The building she had come out of was not a hospital or a testing center, but the US consulate in Shanghai. She had been granted a simple tourist visa to visit my home in the US. Our exuberance may seem a little excessive, except to those who have gone through the process themselves.

The US maintains one of the world's most complicated and aggressive visa application processes.

On March 1, the US embassy and consulates in China began a new online visa application. They promised it would make the process easier and faster.

However, the new application only appears to make things significantly easier for those processing the visas, not the applicants themselves.

Applicants for any type of visa still must all go through a number of steps culminating in a trip to their district's US consulate for a visa interview.

For some, this could entail a journey of thousands of kilometers. Upon arrival applicants usually must wait in line for hours before they are interviewed by the consular officer who has sole discretion as to whether an applicant is approved.

The US embassy states: "Every alien is presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer..." The law places this burden of proof on each individual applicant.

This policy, framed in distinctly euphemistic language, basically says that all visa applicants are assumed guilty of visa fraud until they prove themselves innocent. Many applicants are treated accordingly under this criminal assumption.

During my girlfriend's interview, she was interrogated by the consular officer and had to answer several personal questions about our relationship and her family background.

Then, as a final insult, whether or not applicants are approved for their visa, they still must forfeit their 904 yuan ($132.40) application fee, and of course, all the time and money it cost them to travel to the interview.

It's common for an applicant to spend several days and thousands of yuan traveling across the country for the interview, only to be denied their visa without an explanation.

In the past, the US could get away with this insulting visa policy. Known as "the land of opportunity" with its top universities and limitless possibilities for self-starting entrepreneurs, it's a place that used to be one of the few obvious paths to success. This was especially the case for those coming from developing nations like China.

But now the world dynamic has changed and, with the rise of the rest, the US is no longer the only enticing venue around.

China is a prime indicator of this new dynamic. Local Chinese talent is finding greater incentive to stay home or go to countries other than the US.

The difficult and degrading visa process is often cited as the final straw in the decisions of Chinese scholars and businessmen to take their talent or investment elsewhere.