Word: visa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...latest shock is the poor performance of one of Amex's youngest and most vaunted products: the Optima card. Launched four years ago as Amex's response to Visa and MasterCard, the revolving-charge card was perceived as a winner. But the company announced earlier this month that Optima (total card members: more than 3 million) had suffered much higher defaults than expected. The result: $155 million in Optima write-offs during the third quarter, which will produce a loss -- the first one ever -- of $50 million to $75 million for the company's Travel Related Services division...
When Fiona McConnell, 24, came to the U.S. from Ireland five years ago, she had a one-year visa. Now she is an illegal alien, working as a nanny in New York City. Which is why she plans to travel this week to Arlington, Va., to mail her application for one of the visa slots set aside for Irish nationals under the new law. If she gets a green card, McConnell says, "I could go to school or get a better job." Given her present status, McConnell does not have health insurance. In an emergency she would have to depend...
...European immigrants, whose numbers have fallen off sharply in recent years, the law represents a long-awaited shot at a visa. From 1955 to 1964, 50% of all new Americans came from Europe. By 1989, that figure was down to 8%, while 29% arrived from Asia and 56% from Canada, Mexico, Central America | and the Caribbean. To avoid charges that whites are again being favored over Hispanics, blacks and Asians, the new law increases the number of slots for family members of aliens, which will largely benefit non-Europeans (from 446,000 to 520,000), while providing 40,000 visas...
...visa lottery -- it's been dubbed the Irish sweepstakes -- has enterprising immigrants filling out hundreds of applications in the hope of improving their chances. Fears that revealing their names and addresses will make them vulnerable to arrest and deportation have been muted because the names are being collected by the State Department, not the immigration service, and because an earlier lottery of this kind did not result in sweeps...
...Visa and MasterCard have introduced so-called affinity cards for conservation groups. As in credit-card programs that award frequent-flyer mileage on major airlines, the nonprofit organizations receive a small percentage of the bill charged by each new member customer. The Nature Conservancy has taken in $150,000 from MCI since the program began last February, and expects its take to grow to nearly $400,000 annually in the future...