Why is it so hard for business travelers to enter the US?

Sara

Welch of the NYT has been talking to the State Department about the difficulty

of getting visas to enter the US:

Changes added after Sept. 11, 2001 “came so quickly that we weren’t

as efficient as we wanted to be,” said Maura Harty, assistant secretary

for consular affairs in the State Department. “But we now have an expedited

service for business travel visas in place in every U.S. consulate and embassy

in the world.”

Ms. Harty said that only 29 percent of the respondents in the Discover America

Partnership survey had applied for a visa in the last 18 months. “I

urge people who haven’t applied for a visa in a few years to come back,”

she said. “Try us, you’ll like us.”

I’m sorry, I should have warned you to put your coffee down before reading

that, so you didn’t spew it all over your keyboard.

Welch herself, of course, finds no difficulty in finding all manner of people

who have tried their local US embassy, and not liked the experience one bit:

Luis Gómez Hernández, a meeting planner in Ecatepec de Morelos,

Mexico, said he used to bring groups of 30 to 40 businesspeople to the United

States four times a year, but stopped in 2003 because of the difficulty in

obtaining visas. It took up to three months for applicants to get an appointment

at the United States Embassy or a consulate and at least two more weeks to

obtain the visa, “and in a group of 40, only 3 or 4 would get them,”

he said.

I’m sure there are some business trips which can be planned on three months’

notice, but I’m equally sure there aren’t many. One of those trips is the Consumer

Electronics Show in Las Vegas – but this year, stories were legion of

overseas attendees not being able to come, especially from China, for failure

to be able to get a visa. And it’s hard to argue with the numbers:

In November, Euromonitor International, a London-based market research firm,

found that the number of business arrivals in the United States fell 10 percent

from 2004 to 2005, while the number of such arrivals in Europe grew 8 percent

over the same period.

Clay Risen,

at TNR (HT: Gross),

also has numbers, altough they have a slightly more dubious provenance: he cites

only "one industry group" as saying "that, between July 2002

and mid-2004, border restrictions cost U.S. businesses $30 billion". He

sees which way the wind is blowing:

The United States must make a decision. Much of the world believes that the

benefits of open borders trump the threats. We obviously feel differently

but have yet to recognize the costs involved. But, by tightening our borders,

we risk being passed over by a globalizing, integrating world…

The economic consequences are obvious enough: Why headquarter a company in

New York if its international employees, let alone clients, can’t get there?

As a foreigner who’s spent a great deal of time in the US (I’ve had, in my

time, not only tourist waivers but also a B visa, two H visas, an I visa, a

J visa, "advance parole", and – finally! – a green card),

and also as a New Yorker with many foreign friends, I know full well how unpleasant

the whole immigration palaver can be.

And the fact is that it’s simply untenable these days to ask a Chinese CEO,

who’s jetting all over Asia on a regular basis, to surrender his passport for

two or three weeks while maybe or maybe not getting a visa to visit the US.

What’s more, such procedures do absolutely no good whatsoever in terms of protecting

US homeland security.

My wonder is that the business lobby hasn’t made this much more of an issue.

But the more press we can get on this idiotic state of affairs, the better.