NEW DELHI - Christopher Columbus, who
thought he had discovered India when he ran into
North America sailing for a new spice route, might
be even more convinced these days, with Indians
set to become the largest segment of foreign
workers and second-largest number of students
seeking visas for the United States.
In a
year in which immigration polices are stormily
featuring in the debate for the November
elections, United States President Barack Obama
appears singing a different visa tune from when
assumed office four years ago. India had the
highest American visa rejection rates in the world
in 2009, a year after Obama became president,
according to a US immigration report this month.
Visa rejections for Indians rocketed up eight-fold
to 22.5% of applications from 2.8% the previous
year.
On January 19, Obama ordered a
streamlining of the visa process to increase
travel to the US from countries like China, India and
Brazil, in what might
well be the largest peacetime movement of people
in human history, between the world's two largest
democracies and the world's most populated
country.
"The number of travelers from
emerging economies with growing middle classes -
such as China, Brazil, and India - is projected to
grow by 135%, 274%, and 50% respectively by 2016
when compared to 2010," James W Herman, the
Minister-Counselor for US Consular Affairs in New
Delhi, informed Asia Times Online. Visa
applications from India are projected to increase
at 14% year-on-year until 2020, he said.
Herman said India has the highest number
of business visas to the US issues worldwide, and
is placed second for student visas. He expects
that each year until 2020, US consulates in India
will process 2.1 million visa applications - over
twice the population of a small country like
Bhutan.
Whatever the distant past, the
present widening of doors has raised the hackles
of Republicans. The US Congress is scheduled this
month to investigate allegations that immigration
officers are being pressurized to speed-up visa
applications without due regard for fraud and
security.
The probe follows the US
Department of Homeland Security issuing a 40-page
report, later leaked to the public, alleging that
25% of immigration officers said they had been
urged to approve dubious visa cases. One officer
was even demoted for rejecting too many
applications. But a spokesperson for the United
States Citizenship and Immigration Service denied
any such goings-on.
Visa quotas are
blistering the presidential election year - a
legacy that could perhaps be blamed on the
Iranians. A certain Persian king Artaxerxes I
(464-425 BC) of Achaemenis dynasty is said to have
issued the world's first ever visa or passport,
circa 450 BC. He gave a letter to a court official
granting him safe passage to lands "beyond the
river". He thus started the history of visa woes
and American immigration headaches - and perhaps
gifted habitual Iran-bashers in the US some more
ammunition.
The Washington-based
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)
said Obama's presidential executive order on visas
encourages "terrorism and visa overstays". Relaxed
visa norms threaten "the integrity of [the
American] immigration system", blasted Lamar
Smith, US congressman from Texas who chairs the
House Committee on the Judiciary. "It's outrageous
that administration officials would compromise
national security for their own political agenda
and gain."
More trouble erupted with
allegedly increasing H-1B visa fraud, with the
Eastern District Court of Texas issuing a subpoena
to leading Indian software firm Infosys last May
for alleged misuse of work visas. In 2011, nearly
700,000 US visa applications were processed in
India and a record 67,105 H-1B work visas were
issued, mostly to software professionals.
India accounts for nearly 65% of the H-1B
visa applications US embassies receive worldwide,
but Indian trade associations complain that is not
enough. The US embassy in New Delhi has even set
up a special department to deal with H-1B visa
woes.
But while H-1B visa workers are
suspected of stealing American jobs, other
travelers from India, China and Brazil are
welcomed as job creators. The US State Department
estimates that every additional 65 visitors leads
to one more tourism-related job in the US.
Doubling arrivals from China, India and Brazil
would support over 200,000 jobs, according to the
Washington-based US Travel Association.
Popular US Senator Mary Landrieu from
Louisiana endeared herself even more with the US
travel fraternity in 2011 when she ardently pushed
for conducting tourist visa interviews through
secure, remote video-conferencing technology.
Regular consular access itself can be a
nightmare in vast countries such as India, China
and Brazil. Entire families and tour groups have
to sometimes travel thousands of kilometers to the
nearest US consulate just to apply for a visa.
China, with over 450 cities each with over
1.5 million people, has only five cities - in
Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu
- with a US consulate offering tour group visa
interviews. India has four US consulates - in New
Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. The video
conferencing move if implemented to could increase
millions more visitors from India, China and
Brazil.
Currently, Japan, South Korea and
Singapore are the only three Asian countries among
36 nations whose citizens do not need a paper visa
to stay in the US for a period of 90 days. But
given the desperation of some folks in this part
of the world to get to the US, it's not quite
likely that Indian and Chinese travelers can in
the near future land at New York's JFK airport
without the US visa stamp. Even a simple tourist
visa may not always appear straightforward,
according to some interview experiences [1].
China saw an even bigger demand to travel
to the US, with over one million visa applications
in 2011, a 34% increase over 2010. Nearly 260,000
visas were processed in the first quarter of
fiscal year 2012, compared to 175,000 visas in
2011. Visa interview waiting times in China have
shrunk to just two days at the five US
visa-processing consulates.
Expanding
infrastructure to cope with the visa rush can brew
a controversy or two, as when the US consulate in
Mumbai shifted address last November. Its longtime
premises Lincoln House in Breach Candy, South
Mumbai, was palace of Maharaja Wankaner
Pratapsinhji, king of Wankaner, a small Western
Indian princely state until 1947.
The
palace occupying 8,345 square meters of prime
Mumbai real estate was given on a 999-year lease
to the US government for 1.8 million rupees
(US$36,000) in 1957. A political ruckus may erupt
if the US government tries selling it - and
possibly violates Indian laws of property
ownership for foreigners.
The US consulate
had not much choice but to move address in Mumbai.
If Maharaja Pratapsinhji applied for a US visa
circa 2011, he might be playing mobile phone games
all day and night outside the US consulate in
queues sometimes over 3,000 people. Local
residents complained.
The Maharaja's
descendants, having no surviving lease documents,
say they will not challenge any American sale of
their ancestral property. "I look at it as one of
the biggest donations an Indian citizen may have
made to the world's richest nation," a descendant
Digvijaysinh Jhal resignedly told the Indian
Express last November. The "donation" is worth
about 18 billion rupees (US$361 million) in
current real estate prices. The US though has
still a bit of time to decide Lincoln House's
future - until the year 2956.
The less
royal, more spacious new American consulate in
suburban Mumbai has 44 visa counters and two large
waiting halls to seat 2,000 visa applicants at a
time. US Embassy staffing overall across India has
in fact increased by whopping 60% in 2011. But it
still may not be enough to cope with Asia's rush
to America, and consequent chain of events.
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