It was easy for us to get permission to come to China. We brought our paperwork to the Chinese consulate and the next day we picked up our visas. When we went to Thailand we didn’t even need visas. Americans can travel in the Thai kingdom for 30 days without one. Our dark blue passports let us move easily from one country to the next. We are lucky that we can travel all around the world. Most people we meet will never have the opportunity.
A close friend of ours was just denied a tourist visa by the American government. To protect her privacy, I will call her Zhang Ziyi. Ziyi is a teacher here, and she has become close friends with many of the foreign English instructors. Ziyi helped us open a Bank of China account, and cooked us a traditional Chinese meal. She is a genuinely nice person, and she has great curiosity about people and places around the world. Ziyi is also divorced, a huge taboo here, and she is the primary bread winner for her daughter and her mother.
One of the other Americans here, I will call her Catherine Zeta-Jones, invited Ziyi to her home in the States for the summer. They planned to start in Chicago, then drive south across the country, ending in Florida. Ziyi easily got a passport from the PRC, but she also needed a tourist visa from the American government. That part was much harder.
I’m certain she had no intention of emigrating. She would never leave her daughter or her mother behind, no matter how much money she might be able to make in America. She saw this trip as a grand vacation, not a chance to change her life. Unfortunately, she was unable to prove her intentions to the consular officer in Shenyang. They assume that everyone from China who applies for a tourist visa really wants to live happily ever after in America.
Catherine has gone home, and she is now lobbying her Congressman on Ziyi’s behalf. She is trying to appeal the consulate’s decision, and hoping that Ziyi will be able to visit for the second half of the summer. I doubt it will do much good. Immigration is just too hot right now.
I believe that immigration has always been good for America. It has made our country stronger and a lot more interesting. International tourism is good for America, too. The people of the world have a great deal of ambivalence toward the USA. If more of them were able to visit America, they would return home with a better understanding of who we are. But first we have to let them in.
6 Comments
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I agree 100%
I am working with a girl right now who will be going next week for her visa interview.
It is hard, when you take into consideration that over 90% of all Chinese students who go to the US to study, never return to China. (I know you are talking about a tourist visa, but the problem still arises.) Even with all of the tough questioning and assurances of returning home, this number is staggering.
A lot of problems arise when it comes to developing countries. It took over two years to get my Sister-In-Law into the US, from the Philippines, even being married to my brother, and with a newborn Child.
The government has a tough job in keeping the balance with workforce/economy.
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dude that sucks.
i had a friend from china come over for a wedding last year. she was really worried about not getting her visa. she had to prepare months in advance. i don’t know why the officer wouldn’t allow your friend to come over. it seems like she has plenty of reasons not to stay.
i guess that family is not enough. maybe it has to do with how they view the quality of their existing job.
jeez, it seems like people would WANT to stay in china right now, with the way they are growing. there are plenty of americans who want to work in china.
i can’t remember who i was talking to, but they had mentioned that studies show that the current generation of college grads are the first ones in american history to be so aggressively looking for jobs outside of the US.
anyway, i hope that your friend is able to come and visit.
i think it’s just as important for foreigners to come and visit the US (of course not if they’ve got an agenda to do harm), and get to know the culture better, and take their hopefully positive experiences back to their country. and maybe they can tell people that americans are not all bad.
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US policies are insane, and not even well enough designed to prevent what they set out to avoid, be it terrorism or immigration.
Here’s a little story of our own. Will didn’t notice that his passport had expired before he tried to fly to Ireland with me until we were at the airport. He couldn’t leave the country on his expired US passort, so he decided to make the trip on his British passort. All was well until he tried to return to the US. As a Brit, without a resident visa or green card, the US wouldn’t let him board a plane to get back home. He couldn’t even enter as a British tourist! I had to leave him in London, where he worked his beaurocratic magic with the US Embassy and caught a plane back yesterday.
The process is crazy even for nationals of countries from which we’re not worried about mass immigration.
Hopefully your friends will have some luck, but nothing’s easy with the US these days.
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Thats so sad!
I wish her luck getting to the US.
I doesnt bother me that she wants to visit. It wouldnt bother me if she stayed either! We need teachers too!!
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That is a very sad story, I hope against hope that something good will happen soon. Immigration is such a hot topic right now that it seems anyone seeking a visa is immediately suspicious.
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Blog hopper here. That’s a crying shame. My grandparents will never be able to see us in the US and our home here because the US consulate won’t grant them the visa. They tried three times, with no luck. Now they are in their late 70s, and can’t make the trip because of health. This pisses me off to no end.