Sunday, June 29, 2008

Visaless in Vladivostok

America is, the old phrase goes, a nation of immigrants. The fact that historically we have been made strong by our openness to foreigners is hard to dispute. From the first waves of German farmers in Pennsylvania to the Irish later in the 19th century, to the boatloads of Eastern European Jews at the beginning of the 20th century and extending all the way to the Mexican workers of today who prop up the economies of the Western states, immigrants are a net positive to our collective fabric and to our economy. This is something few M&M readers would argue with.

Part of the historical genius of our country is that citizenship is based on the belief in a shared idea, not in tribalism and ethnicity. If you are enterprising and hard working, you too can have a seat at the table of American life, or at least your children can. This is why every American has a "hyphenated background" - we are Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Japanese-Americans. For most of us, you don't have to go too far down the family tree to find someone from a different country. Even America's whitest areas form a quilt of varied descent. We take this diversity of backgrounds for granted, but when you stand back and compare it to most nations in the world, this situation is a serendipitous anomaly. In Japan, Koreans who have lived there for three generations still have to carry identification cards showing that they are gaijin; in supposedly broadminded and liberal Scandinavia, workers from SE Asia and Pakistan are never accepted fully into homogeneous society. Of course, there are plenty of recent immigrants in America that are treated shamefully and denied a place at a table, but you can bet that these individual's children and grandchildren will be integrated. This is, after all, the process through which most Americans are made, and it's been that way since our founding. E pluribus unum.

Today is a different story. All-inclusive openness to foreigners has gone the way of Geneva-abiding interrogation techniques and legal consequences for illegal wiretapping. In GOP speak, it was part of the "September 10th mindset." When we found our nation under attack, our leaders chose to build walls, to keep dangerous and potentially subversive "Others" out. Because of a few bad seeds from the Middle East, we closed our doors and sent a message to the world that America is now a fortress. Security trumps principle. Since then, new, much stricter immigration and travel policies have been put in place that have made it excruciatingly difficult and humiliating, if not outright impossible, for citizens of certain countries to get into the US. As a consequence of the xenophobic zealotry of our policy makers, Chinese and Indian engineering students are opting for Ph.D. programs in Australia instead; rich Brazilians and Russians are staying home instead of traveling to the US to spend their money and learn about us. The lucky few who do make it in are fingerprinted in the airport before heading out into the Land of the Free.

To illustrate our maddeningly restrictive immigration/travel policies, I thought I'd relate a couple of personal experiences. When I was living in Japan, a couple of my most promising high school students wanted to do a four month long home-stay program at our sister school in Sitka, Alaska. Our school had a long (pre-9/11) history of exchange with Sitka, and every year teachers tried to motivate students to go abroad, something that is still a rarity in Japan. Indeed, many of the alumni from this program went on to careers as English teachers and translators. Alaskans get the experience of hosting and befriending Japanese students, and the students get to experience a different lifestyle and learn English. Everyone wins.

The students booked their tickets and made arrangements. All that was left was the mandatory visa interview at the US consulate in Tokyo, which nobody in our office assumed would be a problem. After all, how much of a threat do two Japanese teenage girls with Hello Kitty cell phone charms going to a small island in Alaska really pose to the security of the United States? Besides the aggravation (and cost) of flying two hours just for a half hour interview, our kids would get in no problem. Right? Imagine the shock and dismay, then, when our students, one week before their departure, were informed by the embassy that their visa applications were denied. As a teacher, I observed two bright and motivated students transform from genki (excited) English students to completely passive and indifferent ones. If the US didn't want them, why should they want to learn English? It was really devastating to our whole department. And the most baffling thing about the whole escapade was the question: why? Was there any good reason at all to turn these girls down? The situation was so absurd that it left us feeling tiny and powerless, like a protagonist in a Kafka story.

More recently, these same old Kafkaesque frustrations are coming back. I'm trying to help Katya get a visa to come visit me in the states, and, like with the Japanese students, this should be a quick an easy task. She is well educated and has money. There would be no reason for her to jump ship, go AWOL, and enter into an underground prostitution ring or drug cartel. But this is precisely what our present visa policy towards Russia assumes that she will do. It is written plainly in the visa application materials: applicants are guilty of wanting to illegally immigrate until they prove their own innocence. The interview, therefore, is really a sort of trial where applicants have to provide the copious paperwork necessary to prove that they have a reason to return to Russia (letter from their employers, title on a car, proof of ownership of property, etc.). On top of that, being a young female sets off additional bells at the consulate (mail-order brides, anyone?). In the past year, four of Katya's female friends have been denied US visas (three wanted to study here, another wanted to visit her aunt).

Now, I'm not arguing that we open our doors to just anyone and set up laissez-faire borders. I also recognize that every nation has a different statistical profile for their citizens in America (the Japanese have it easier than the Russians, for example), and therefore warrants a different level of risk. But keeping fresh talent and tourist dollars away as a matter of policy is absurd and highly damaging. Don't policy makers understand that the majority - yes, majority - of American graduate students in the sciences and math are of foreign birth? Some 40% of tech firms are founded by non-Americans. It is still too early to tell, but I don't see how our current closed-door policies will have anything but a hugely deleterious effect on our economy and on our collective sense of multiculturalism. Furthermore, the humiliating process that so many people have to go through to get into the country makes America look arrogant, security-obsessed, and fearful. Many potential visitors and students aren't even trying anymore and are instead opting for Canada, the UK, and Australia. They know already that America doesn't want them.

I sincerely hope that a new administration will have the vision, the rationality, and the foresight to end this visa mess. After all, as humiliating as the process is for applicants, the real people who are humiliated in front of the eyes of the world are us Americans.

1 comment:

Ruxton Schuh said...

Another thing to add to your article is America's retention of talent. While I haven't done any research on the numbers, I can attest that at least half of my graduate school applications are to foreign universities and is based on my absolute disdain for America's political climate. A friend of mine is on her way to BC for grad school after completing NYU's program in Elementary Education with top marks.

I want to amend or disagree with one of your points though, in that yes, people of varied backgrounds sit together at the table, but ONLY if the people at the table cannot discern a visual difference in background. I understand the implications of the once prevalent anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Semitic sentiments of the American status quo, and that those feelings have largely subsided is noteworthy. However, they are all still white. Native Americans, Mexicans, and African Americans are still still kicked to the curb. African Americans less so, but they have been actively fighting and banding together against their discrimination for generations.