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Attached are our memorandum and exhibits addressed to the Office of Inspector General at the Department of State regarding the Summer Work and Travel Program scandal at the US Embassy in Moscow: Memo — swtletter0001; Exhibits — swtexhibits0001

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/us-embassy-slams-door-on-student-workers/478125.html

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…