Word: visa
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...page, single-spaced letter written to FBI Director Robert Mueller by Colleen Rowley. The letter, portions of which TIME magazine has obtained, chronicle the efforts of Rowley, the Minneapolis Chief Division Counsel, to get the FBI interested in Moussaoui. Moussaoui was arrested in August on a visa violation after the Minnesota flight school at which the French national was taking lessons notified the FBI about his suspicious behavior...
...Thai grand-parents?one of whom had served 12 years in jail?battled to bring him back to Thailand. They've given up, and last week, thanks in part to the personal intervention of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Got was approved for a U.S. "T" visa?designed specially for victims of human trafficking. That means Got will be able to remain in America and eventually become a permanent resident. Got will likely be adopted by his American caretakers, Evan Smyth and Janet Herold...
...they're scammed as well. Undetected until recently, a network of brokers has for years been using Amerasians to traffic Vietnamese into the U.S. Eleven people, including Phuong, have been arrested for providing Amerasians with false identities and matching them with people willing to pay for a U.S. resident visa (those detained have pleaded not guilty and await trial). Since the Amerasian Homecoming Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1987, some 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives have emigrated to the U.S. How many of those kin are fake may never be known...
...What's also disturbing is that the con seems to have required the complicity of consulate staffers, possibly local Vietnamese. Unlike most immigration policies, the Amerasian regulations are designed to be lenient. A visa can be granted to anyone deemed to possess "Amerasian facial features." So it's hard to understand how Tran Van Hai could have been rejected. Dark-skinned with kinky hair and built like a linebacker, Hai, 30, says he's the son of an African-American airman named Mark who lived with his mother in the 1970s. Denied a visa, he went to the consulate...
...officials won't say if an investigation of the consulate staff is under way. The consulate insists that the Amerasian visa program is tightly controlled, that American staffers are involved in interviewing and that if an officer determines an applicant is not Amerasian, two others must agree for the person to be rejected. But the problem persists and applicants report never seeing an American. As long as legitimate Amerasians are denied visas, they will be victims of fraud-or stay where they are living reminders of a painful past...