Critics say visa rules foster 'culture of no'

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post

AUSTIN, Texas — More than two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a thicket of new rules governing the granting of visas to foreigners is dissuading thousands of people from coming to the United States and generating protests from research universities, medical institutions, multinational corporations and the travel industry.

Because of the new regulations, American universities have lost students and scholars; corporations have suffered production delays, friction with customers and personnel problems; and foreign tourists and conventioneers have decided by the thousands to take their business elsewhere.

Increasingly, U.S. leaders in education, business and science are warning that the procedural obstacles thrown up to screen security threats have fostered a bureaucratic "culture of no" that discounts the benefits that foreigners bring to the United States.

Bush administration officials defend the new rules, saying they are keeping terrorists from entering the country. "In the post-9/11 environment, we do not believe that the issues at stake allow us the luxury of erring on the side of expeditious processing," Janice L. Jacobs, deputy assistant secretary of state for visa services, told a congressional committee earlier this year.

But many critics caution that by requiring foreigners to wait weeks or months for visas, Washington is damaging its efforts at public diplomacy.

"Our commercial, research and academic institutions have always benefited from the open exchange of people, knowledge and ideas," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif. "We need to protect ourselves. But we don't want to go too far and lose the rewards of an open society."

All 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States on valid visas, most of them without being interviewed by an American consular officer. Mindful of that, the Bush administration adopted extensive new policies governing visas, the latest of which took effect on Aug. 1.

The most significant include a requirement for face-to-face interviews for hundreds of thousands of visa-seekers who previously were excused from such interviews, and the withholding of visas for certain categories of people until the FBI runs name checks to determine that they do not appear to be a threat. That process can take months.

Starting Jan. 5, the government intends to fingerprint all visa-bearing travelers who arrive at airports and seaports. Next October, visitors who do not require visas — mostly people from Japan, Western Europe and Canada — will have to have machine-readable passports.

The new regulations have created special hindrances and holdups for people from Islamic countries who are the subject of concerns about terrorism.

Visitors from South Korea and Brazil, which rank among the top 10 countries sending people to the United States, have also faced weeks-long delays in applying for visas.

Even British citizens working for American companies overseas are facing waits of a month or two to obtain longer-term work visas for transfers to the United States, a process that once took less than two weeks.

For example, The Amway Corp., one of the world's largest direct-sale firms, ruled out Los Angeles and Hawai'i as possible convention sites for about 8,000 South Korean distributors next year, in the face of a requirement that they all complete face-to-face interviews with U.S. consular officials.

Jacobs, the deputy assistant secretary of state, and other officials argue that FBI name checks are not a significant drag on travel to the United States.

Officials do acknowledge, however, that the requirement for in-person interviews has created long delays.

"The problem is that the administration has made all these new requirements for face-to-face interviews and adding background checks but has not provided adequate resources to fund them," Waxman said.