A really tragic story about a visa going bad for someone visiting America
I am American and I know very little about what our immigration policy is like because I don't have to know about that. I can't really imagine a situation where anyone's government simply wouldn't allow them to come back into their own country aside from some sort of bizarre mixup or computer malfunction and even then after an interview or something they are kind of obligated to let you back in right?
I presume that is true.
That is not the point of this writeup though but I just wanted to point out that a lot of the travelers that I come across in my more than 2 decades of international travel have at least one or two complaints about having visa problems in various places that they have been in the world. I think that as a member of the USA or some other G8 country that we tend to have a bit of inexperience about how difficult it actually is for other, less wealthy nations to travel at all let alone with mostly free visas on arrival.
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As an American I have one of the most valuable passports in the world, at least for now. My government seems to be working overtime to make that not be the case but that is a story for another day and for someone far more interested in politics than I am. I'm just trying to say that sometimes I take this privilege for granted and don't really know how extremely difficult it can be for other people from developing or "3rd world" nations.
It was a while ago, but while in Asia I met a Thai woman who had quite the retort when I was complaining about my inability to get another visa to some country, I don't remember which. I was in Laos at the time and just happened to meet her there. She kind of scoffed at my tale of woe and then told me something that I couldn't believe at first. We ended up talking about it for quite some time though because I had never thought about the difficulties of travel for people from I guess you could call them "less favored nations."
This Thai woman was from a relatively affluent family. I knew that she wasn't bullshitting me when she showed me her American Express Platinum card and if you know anything about this particular credit card, they don't just give them to anyone that wants them like Visa or MasterCard does. You have to pay it off every month AND pay a yearly fee for it. Failing to do so results in massive fines. So yeah, her family is very well off.
Years ago she wanted to visit the United States for one reason or another and I had no idea how difficult it can be for someone to do that, let alone someone from Thailand. You see, if an American wants to visit Thailand, they simply jump on a plane and then do so. We are granted 30 days (it could be more by now, it's been years since I was there) and I don't ever hear of any stories of anyone being denied entry. If you want to stay longer, you simply apply online or go to a nearby Thai consulate, pay a bit of money, and then you can get a visa for up to 6 months with almost no issue provided you have the $50-100 that it costs for such a visa.
Well in order for this woman to get a visa to visit the United States there was no online option. She had to physically go to our fortress of an Embassy in Bangkok and wait for hours to apply for it. Then, she was subjected to proving bank accounts, make a genuine claim for why she wanted to go to the United States and then weeks later had to be called back in for an interview including proof of where she was going to stay for at least the first 2 weeks of her visit. This wasn't much of a problem for her because she had some very definitive destinations in mind but still, who wants to book 2 weeks of hotels and pre-pay for them before they even book a flight. Oh and she had to book a return flight as proof that she was going to leave inside of the window of her proposed visas BEFORE she has even been issued said visa.
It took around a month for the visa to eventually be approved and she had to once again, go to the embassy fortress in Bangkok to pick it up after her passport had been there for at that point nearly 6 weeks. If she had needed to travel somewhere during that time I am sure the US Embassy would have had an attitude of "tough shit, sweetheart."
So she gets her visa, gets on a plane, departs said plane after a grueling 20+ hour flight to New York City, waits in an absurd line that took around 3 hours for her to get to the front of it and then gets told at the counter that she has to go to ANOTHER interview in a side office with Homeland Security. I've forgotten most of the conversation that she could recall that took place in that Homeland Security office but she told me that the interviewer was passive-aggressive the entire time and treated her like she was a criminal. She also told me that on the other side of the door that was now closed during the interview there was a soldier with a machine gun. Needless to say this made her very nervous.
By the time the interview reached its conclusion she was left in a scary featureless office that contained nothing other than a table with some chairs and the American flag and was told to wait. She was there for more than 2 hours before a different person came back to inform her that her entry to the United States was denied and that she would need to book a flight out of the country immediately. When she inquired as to why the person said they "were not at liberty to discuss that."
So she was forced, while using a computer terminal in another room that might have been taking all of her personal data for all she knows including her credit card information, to book a last-minute flight back to her country of origin. This cost her over $2000 because that is how last minute flights work. She was not even permitted to stay in the international transit hotel.
She was kept in a holding room until just before her flight and then was escorted to her departure gate. All the while the officials had a smile on their faces like they were getting a kick out of mistreating this completely innocent woman who just wanted to go on vacation in America.
To add insult to injury (or however that statement goes), Homeland Security didn't even inform the airline that she had used to get to the USA in the first place that her visa was denied so she had to go through hell to get her bags returned to Thailand and of course, she had to a "cargo rate" for this since it was considered unaccompanied luggage. This is extremely expensive. So in the end, this lady had to pay thousands of dollars, 6 weeks of her life, and a horrible 15 hours or so in a holding area in a country that didn't let her in anyway.
She is not a criminal. She has no criminal record. She is from a rather wealthy family but still, and with no reason given to her at all she was denied entry to a country after they had already issued her a visa in Thailand.
This is a story that I keep in my mind any time that I feel as though a country's visa regulations are unreasonable. I have never been through anything even close to as horrible as that in all the years I have been traveling. Needless to say this woman has never attempted to return to the United States and says that she never will.
I suppose the lesson here is that if you are from a G8 or G12 country and you ever find yourself bitching about visa issues to maybe put things into perspective. We really do have it extremely easy compared to other nationalities.