Posted on: Monday, September 15, 2003

EDITORIAL
Visa scrutiny: caution leading to unfairness

Before Sept. 11, 2001, it was obvious that the United States was more comfortable admitting visitors from Europe than from Asia.

That comfort gap is now much wider as Washington orders face-to-face interviews by foreign service officers with millions of visa applicants who previously didn't merit such scrutiny.

It took a decade for the United States to conclude that it faced no harm by permitting visa-free visits by tourists from Japan and 27 other (mostly European) countries. That courtesy hasn't been altered by the security concerns aroused by 9-11.

But for any other country, face-to-face interviews are now required of all visa applicants, and the State Department must do this extra work without more money or bodies to do it. The hassle and delay is obviously discouraging foreign nationals from many countries from visiting the United States.

A federal law due to take effect in a year will add fingerprinting to the interview requirement. These are unnecessarily demeaning requirements for long-time, steadfast and industrialized allies like South Korea and Taiwan.

The bottom line is, it didn't get harder for citizens from most European countries to visit the United States after 9-11, but it now will be much harder for would-be visitors from every Asian country except Japan.

Washington's bias is showing. Do authorities think terrorists won't be better prepared for the two- to three-minute interviews than most of the millions of legitimate applicants?

Although there's no reason that Koreans shouldn't be able to visit all of the United States visa-free, the idea of an easier-to-obtain Hawai'i-only visa makes sense as a first step.

Koreans don't need visas to visit Guam, a U.S. territory. Guam had only about 15,000 Korean visitors in 1992 and now has 150,000. These visitors are welcome in Hawai'i, and might come if we can reduce the hassle.