洋人的签经——外国噩梦

Via /.

A few years back I was contracted to run 2 x 1 week 'train the trainer' technical courses in the USA based on a training course I had developed. Being an upstanding UK citizen, I applied to the US embassy in London for a H1-B visa and the application was refused for (something like) 'insufficient details of nature of visit'. When I rang the visa enquiries line, I was connected to a call centre in Scotland that said they could provide no assistance as they were not embassy staff and all they could do was send me another form - and, no, they could not put me through the the embassy.

Armed with absolutely no knowledge of what information was missing from my application, I approached American Express who have a visa checking service - I took my application to their office in London (a 1.5 hour train ride), paid £70 extra for a 'personal service' and they checked over my application, gave it their 'OK' and submitted it to the Embassy by courier for same day processing. Guess what - same rejection.

In desperation, I approached a relative who worked in a different embassy in London and explained my dilemma - they rang a contact in the US embassy who put me in touch with someone in the visa department who agreed to look at my documents and call me back. After several hours, they called and said I would need a signed letter from the US training company confirming that they needed me to run the courses as there was no-one suitable in the USA who could do it. I arranged this by fax and then was later invited to the US embassy to get my visa - by now, this was the day before I was due to fly out!

But that's not the end of it - now when visiting the USA on holiday and filling in the visa waiver form on the plane, I have to answer 'yes' to the question asking whether I have ever been refused a US visa; this now guarantees me a near 100% chance of being stopped at US immigration for an interview, which generally goes like this:

* Sit in a waiting room for an hour
* Get called into interview room
* Asked why a visa was refused
* Explain the fax I had to arrange
* Asked 'is that all'?
* Told I am free to go

And this was all well before 9/11 etc.