Short version: Vietnamese-American woman needs stem cell donor; sister in Vietnam is perfect match; U.S. Consulate denies her medical visa three times because they don’t think there’s enough evidence to prove that she will actually go back to Vietnam when finished, *even though she has a young child, real estate, and businesses to take care of there. *
A flawed visa process, or just plain heartlessness?
Probably both, but in Trump’s America, I lean strongly towards the second one.
:mad:
So your contention is that, if this happened this time last year, the results would be different?
And you believe that even though the Consul General has been in office since this time last year?
Put simply: what the hell does “Trump’s America” have to do with anything?
I’ve been wondering this since November.
The second reason, most likely.
Maybe because people are subject to top-down cultural influences – these guys have all been around since long before Trump’s election, too, yet they suddenly seem to have acquired a whole new attitude:
Emboldened by Trump, U.S. Border Officials Are Lying to Asylum Seekers and Turning Them Away
Legal and immigration advocacy groups today filed a class action lawsuit against CPB and the Department of Homeland Security alleging a pattern of misinformation, verbal and physical abuse, intimidation, and outright illegal turn-backs of people requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lawyers involved with the suit said they’ve seen “a drastic increase in illegal turn-backs since Trump was elected.”
A flawed process. Deeply flawed. Consular officers are not required to actually read any documents submitted in support of a visa application and in practice they often do not.
Though in this instance the article makes it sound like the family did not submit any documents from medical providers substantiating the medical emergency in the first application. Since the burden is on the applicant that was a shortcoming on the family’s part. Don’t go saying there is a medical emergency and then not have documents from the hospital and other relevant medical providers confirming the situation. It’s not like the consular officer is going to start an investigation in order to gather more information to approve the visa application.
At this point a private bill may be the best approach if a Congress member is already involved. Take the damn decision right out of the consular officer’s hands.
Question about the medical procedure: Is it necessary for the donor to be in the same location as the recipient? I’m surprised the article doesn’t address that because we see transplant tissue transported all the time.
Immigration is definitely different now since Trump took office. And given the choice between the anti-imigrant and ministration and the one trying to grant amnesty, which one do you think is to blame?
Even if the process would mess up until it reaches this point, which one do you think would use executive powers to fix it now that it’s public, and which one will most likely deny it to be hard on immigrants and attack those bleeding heart liberals, just to celebrate liberal tears?
There is a clear Right and Wrong answer here. You let her come over. If you’re worried, you escort her. There is every reason to believe Obama, being a liberal and thus having an ideology based on compassion would save a life, while Trump, whose ideology is based only on himself, doesn’t care. He wants to pass healthcare bills without regard to who will die, too.
I would be extremely surprised if Trump intervenes. Even when looking good and the right thing align, Trump doesn’t do it.
In the general sense it is not necessary they be in same place, but might be a necessity in this case.
If donor cells are extracted abroad you need a medical facility capable of extracting and processing the donor cells AND you need rapid transport of the donor cells to the patient. There may be some paperwork that someone must process for some bureaucracy along the line. And the clock is ticking.
It appears the patient may be too ill to travel so transporting her to the donor is probably not an option at this point.
How much time do the donor cells remain viable? Apparently for certain types of tissue time is not so critical. But for other tissue donation types, not surprisingly this study seems to show that effectiveness of the transplant falls with longer time interval between end of extraction and start of infusion, with 20 hours or less seeming to be preferable.
Transport of donor tissue would need to be to the States in this instance. And with the donor in Vietnam are there non-stop flights between Vietnam and the States? I don’t find any. Is it even possible to transport a donated sample from Vietnam to the patient in less than 20 hours? Doesn’t seem likely.
Its the United State’s privilege to decide who can come to its shores. And that privilege extends to giving any or no reason. And the same is true for other countries. You do not generally have a right to visit a foreign country.
The effect of that is decisions like the one in the OP. Either agree to something resembling open borders, or at the minimum a presumption in favour of travel or have the current system and see cases like this.
Thanks. If I were the donor, I’d be looking to travel to Canada as an alternative.
Indeed. I would guess that at least one hospital in Vancouver, BC is capable of doing the extraction. And transport time from there to Southern California* should be well within acceptable limits.
As dickish as the US Consulate is being, at some point you have to make the decision to find alternate means of moving forward rather than continuing to fight on principle. And I have an inkling that Canadian immigration would be more than willing to grant any needed visa in this case.
And USCIS can be hella dickish. I work 9-1-1 in the Cayman Islands. Caymanians who hold a Cayman Islands British Overseas Territories passport can enter the United States on regularly scheduled commercial flights using a visa waiver exemption that requires a Cayman police clearance showing no convictions. So many Caymanians never bother to apply for a 10 year multiple reentry visa to the US though most could easily qualify.
Where this becomes a problem is if a sudden, severe medical emergency arises that is too complex to be dealt with on island - head trauma from MVA, severed limb from construction accident, etc… Medical evacuation flights are mostly to Miami but since those are not regularly scheduled commercial flights the patient cannot use the visa waiver to enter the States even if the patient is unconscious. :smack:
*Though not specifically mentioned in the linked article from the OP, other media reports indicate that the patient herself is somewhere in Southern California.
Update
The donor is finally being admitted to the United States on humanitarian parole.
When I had my stem cell transplant a few years ago (not really a transplant per se since I had my own cells taken out and given back) but there was about a week between extraction and retransfusion. Additionally I have about 25 million cells still frozen at the hospital, in case I need more later on in life!