We had almost exactly this experience in 2006. The visa was initially denied in error (they had misread something), but approved on appeal. Note that the appeal was a non-refundable $1000 or thereabouts even though it was clearly their error.
This visa (O-visa) did not allow for permanent immigration, but did have unlimited renewals. So we knew that at some point it would be denied, but no idea when or what criteria were used. We applied for a three-year extension, but the individual at the London embassy who interviewed the employee didn’t understand our business model (so he said, anyway) and gave us a one-year extension instead. We used that year to shut down the business and leave the US: we just couldn’t keep going in the face of constant uncertainty in this economy. (Immigration, both lawyer and government fees, was averaging $400 / month, and we were too small to absorb that.)
On the other hand, I work for a large multi-national Pharma, and we have folks shuttling in and out to the UK, Sweden, and India all the time - To hear English, Swedish, Indian, and sometimes German accents in the hallways is so common as to be effectively unnoticable. Many of these are long-term secundments, so are almost certainly on a P-Visas. I’ve not seen any noticable angst in getting folks from one country to another, coming or going. Most trips aren’t ‘drop of the hat,’ but are generally planned about one to two month(s) in advance. However, some are very short-fused indeed (days of planning, not weeks).
Of course, we also have a very large legal department, and I suspect a fair number of them are employed entirely in greasing the immigration skids.
Everyone told us that most of the delays and errors we encountered were due to the fact that our application was unusual. (I think even Eva Luna told us our application was a bad idea, though she did it in a very nice way.) I think routine applications, particularly from stable organizations that have submitted before, go much more smoothly.
I have one-off experience with visas in three countries (UK, Canada, US) and all were similar processes. I suspect the U.S. is worse merely as a matter of scale, both population and economy.
I dount they are P visas; those are for performers. The more typical in that situation would be H-1B (for jobs requirirng at least a bachelor’s degree) or L-1 (for intracompany transferees). Both are long-term work visas.
OK, yes - Jobs requiring a certain level of education, or equavalent experience and / or medium-term transfers (relatively few perminant transfers here - mostly at the executive level).
Oh, the default is definitely “difficult”, even for tourist visas. I attended a conference in the US, and since I’m a South African citizen I had to get a B-1/B-2 visa (that is the regular visitor’s visa). The process went like this (and there was absolutely nothing unusual about my case):
[ol]
[li]Fill in an immense multi-page visa application form on the State Department website. No problem with this in principle, except that the website was really badly designed: it would time out if you didn’t move from one page to the next for 15 minutes, and you couldn’t either move pages or save the application if the current page was incomplete. So if you have to go away and look for some documentation, you can’t save the application and you can’t avoid the timeout. :smack:[/li][li]Make an appointment for an interview. The waiting list was actually quite short; I got one only ten days away.[/li][li]Deposit the $160 application fee (non-refundable if your application is rejected). And this has to be deposited at one specific bank, and only cash is accepted - no cheques, no credit card, no electronic transfer.[/li][li]Collect all the documentation to prove that (a) you have enough money to support your self when you’re in the US; and (b) that you have enough connections to your home that you’re not likely to overstay in the US. (So in my case: bank statements, payslip from my student job, proof that I owned my flat, proof of registration at my university, letter from my thesis supervisor to say that I was halfway through my degree, etc.)[/li][li]Find a photo shop that will take passport-type photos in the specific size and layout required. The difficulty here was not the State Department’s fault, though; it was the fault of the inability of photo shop technicians to follow plain instructions. ;)[/li][li]Get to the consulate on the day of the appointment. In Cape Town, the consulate is located in an area with no public transport, and has no parking on the grounds. So you have to park at a shopping mall that’s fifteen minutes walk away. (This is a location-specific problem, though; I hear the Johannesburg consulate is much more accessible, for example.)[/li][li]Queue up in a line outside to clear security. The security folks (locals, not Americans) were ridiculously slow - I had an “appointment” for 9am; I arrived there at 8:45 as instructed, and only got into the building at about 9:30. Oh, and you have to leave absolutely everything except your paperwork in a locker at security, you can’t take a phone or a book or an MP3 player with you. Though I suppose I can’t fault them for being careful about security, given the history of attacks on US diplomatic missions.[/li][li]Queue up to speak to the local employee who checks that you’ve paid your fee and that your paperwork is in order, and scans your fingerprints; I waited about half an hour in this queue.[/li][li]Sit in the waiting room to wait for your interview with the consular official. Remember, you can’t bring anything with you, so you can only entertain yourself with the TV showing CNN (at least it wasn’t Fox News :p) or the old copies of Newsweek left there. I waited about one and a half hours for my interview - so with my “appointment” at 9 I finally got seen at 11:30.[/li][li]Speak to the consular officer who makes the decision on your visa. In my case he was quite friendly and only asked about the purpose of my visit and to see my previous US visa in an old passport (which I had luckily brought along). To be honest, while I was waiting, the only people I saw who had trouble with the interviews - there is no privacy, by the way; the officials sit behind glassed-in counters in the waiting-room - were people whose stories did seem kind of sketchy.[/li][li]If your visa is approved, hand over your passport and pay another fee (equivalent to about $30 IIRC) for the courier who will return it to you three days later.[/li][/ol]
In their favour, I can say that all the US officials I dealt with - both at the consulate and at immigration at LAX - were very friendly; certainly much more so than the South African officials at the passport office or at Joburg Airport when I returned.
tl;dr: A US tourist visa application is difficult because it is fraught with bureaucracy and involves a lot of waiting around, and potentially collecting a lot of documentation. And the fee is a bit exorbitant, given that you don’t get it back if your application is refused.
Wow, I didn’t think this thread would have much traction. Thanks for all the responses, very educational.
An update on Robert Rock in the US Open.
He shot an even par 71 today, 1 under par for the tournament, and currently T10. he is going to be around for the weekend and in position to make a great check. Unfortunately, for him, he is 10 shots behind the leader who is making the tournament a runaway. Rock is only 2 shots out of the 2nd place player, halfway through Day 2.
Apparently, after his win in Italy, and knowing his predicament, some of the Euro players had chartered a plane to take them from Italy to Washington DC for the US Open. His Caddie and his clubs arrived earlier in the week on the charter. So not only did Rock not have any practice rounds in Washington DC, he didn’t even have his clubs with him in England to practice.
And I did get 2nd hand confirmation that he was a DUI incident in Atlanta when he was underaged. IIRC, DUI’s have different rules if the offender is underage so I don’t know if he would have been legally drunk if it was 21 (or over).
Robert Rock finished 70-71-76-68=285 and finished T23. Earned approximately $76,000. and a lot of US Fans. Probably made about $10,000-$20,000 considering legal expenses, air travel expenses, caddy expenses, hotel etc.