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We recently published this article on Immigration Lawyers Weekly — ilw.com — http://discuss.ilw.com/content.php?1215-Article-7-Interviews-1-Visa-by-Kenneth-White The recent headline in one of Russia’s leading daily newspapers sounded so welcoming: “America Invites You to Visit." In the extensive accompanying article and interview, the Chief of the Nonimmigrant Visa Unit at the US Embassy in Moscow, Bill Bistransky, praises the natural wonders of the United States and touts the ease of receiving a visa to the United States for “legitimate” visitors.[1] If only it were so. We have previously chronicled how the Embassy in Moscow regularly punishes Russian babushki who stay “too long” in the US;[2] impermissibly readjudicates already-approved USCIS employment petitions, stymying the plans of Russian entrepreneurs and professionals to work in the United States;[3] and doubled its visa refusal rate.[4] But what is remarkable is the continued disconnect between the Embassy’s public relations campaign and the real world experiences of everyday visa applicants. Take the case of Irina….

The Department of State has just published its annual B visa denial statistics. This year,the big news is the marked decline in the rate of denial for Chinese visitor visa (B) applicants — from 12% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2012. This is good news for the Chinese — and the American economy. Other high-volume countries whose citizens were also the beneficiaries of a steep decrease were India and the Philippines, where refusal rates declined from 30.1% to 24.1% and 33.8% to 23.8%, respectively. Given the usual grouping of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries as rapidly developing economic powers, one may be surprised to learn that US consular officers in Brazil deny Brazilian applicants only 3.2% of the time — a rate nearly 8 times less than India and 3 times less than China and Russia. Just last year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano announced that…

Rarely have I had the opportunity to see three consular posts so clearly juxtaposed as I have over the past two weeks in dealing with Tashkent, Moscow, and Jakarta. The experience only reinforces the notion that it is the decisionmakers and consular managers who drive visa policy, not the other way around. Tashkent has come a long way since we filed a Complaint with the Department of State Office of Inspector General in 2008. Tashkent is a post with numerous challenges, including fraud, Lottery intermediaries extorting money from Lottery winners, visa overstays, and operating in a relatively poor country. David Mico, the Consul from 2010 to 2012, was a very good manager who kept an open mind in reviewing visa applications and decisions. He was not afraid to correct a mistake made by a consular officer. His replacement, Otto Westhassel, has followed this tradition by re-opening visa decisions when convincing…

On September 9, the new US-Russia Visa Agreement took effect. The Department of State has pronounced the Agreement to be “historic”. If “historic” means “repeating history”, this is certainly true: Russians will be eligible for three-year US visas — just as they were back in the late 1990s. If the Department means “making history” by putting Russia on a fast track towards waiving visas for Russian citizens, as it has recently done for Brazil, it could not be more mistaken. The subject of visa-free travel between the US and Russia has been raised periodically. In 2011, then-Prime Minister Putin seemingly caught Vice President Biden off guard by broaching the topic of waiving visas for Russians and Americans. Mr. Biden demurred, saying that he was only the Vice President and only the President can make such a decision. Notwithstanding this demurral, the legal spadework had been in place as far back…

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…” The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” We have dedicated the last six blog entries to the worsening visa policy of the United States Embassy in Moscow towards Russians. This policy has taken various forms: doubling of the refusal rate, while the refusal rates in other countries, such as Brazil, have gone down significantly; making scurrilous allegations against Russians; not giving Russians the ability to respond to allegations; denying visas to babushkas for spending prolonged periods of time in the US; issuing one-year visas instead of the required two-year visas; charging new application fees for repeat “interviews” in which decisions have been preordained; short-circuiting the return of students to the United States; impermissibly readjudicating approved employment petitions. The implementation of these changes can bae pinpointed to the arrival of Richard Beer as Consul General in the fall of 2009 and the departure…