Who was responsible for visa delays

[Kaige]

I have a question that maybe someone has an answer. Who in our government was the one that made the decision to stop issuing visa on August 1 2002. I had never heard of this till it happened, as I did save the information in my computer as the way things were supposed to work. Was it Colin Powell, George B or congress. I have never been able to find this out, or was it due to the change in the system that they are trying to get going before 9/11 this year and they put the delay on because the system didn't work as good as they thought, does any one have a thought on this or ideas. Gz always tries to say it is U.S. Authorities or Dept of State, I know the F.B.I. had a hand in the name check process.

[rsun]

I'm not so clear on why either, but you know it's our government, they are here to serve us

 

It's hard to say what "secrets" they are keeping from us, but sometimes you just have to put faith in the leaders we elected.

 

Don't get me wrong, I voted for the other guy in office, but hey, he's our leader, he won the election, maybe didn't win decisively, but he still won.

 

As goes with all our elected leaders, if they don't represent our betst interests, it's our responsibility to vote them out the next time around.

[Guest David]

I bet (guess) that that FBI is responsible for this.

 

Here's why:

 

1) The reason for the MANTIS checks before 9-11 was to halt the theft of U.S. weapons technology. This seems to be the security concern here.

 

2) The FBI back '99 and 2000 threw everything they had at trying to bag Wen Ho Lee for stealing "nuclear secrets" from Los Alamos national laboratory. I turned out to be a crock, since the whole laboratory from a security standpoint was as leaky as a bale of chicken wire, and anyone could have stolen stuff from them. Hell, even the report meant to show that China had gotten hold of U.S. "secrets" was full of mistakes and misinformation.

 

I think this whole "weapons technology" is the FBI's area.. and we know how the FBI doesn't like to share with other departments.

 

 

Yeah, I know there isn't a lot of evidence here, but its my best guess.

 

[rsun]

What's even funnier about Wen Ho Lee, is that he's not from mainland China, he's from Taiwan. So if we're concerned about Taiwan so much, why do we keep selling them weapons

[rsun]

What's funny is that if we sold weapons to the Chinese, I bet you they would be buying them like hot cakes, it seems to me they're a lot bigger then Taiwan, however it probably because a different matter of national security since we don't consider China the same type of ally as Taiwan.

[tonado]

Usually, the USA sells old weapons to foreign countries. Like they sell (or give) older version of missiles to our allies. The older version don't have the new features and capabilities. However, any kind of weapons can be dangerous if they go into the wrong hands.

 

 

-- Tony

[tonado]

Just read the Sunday newspaper. It is about Yao Ming, the basketball player from China who is playing in the NBA now.

 

It said "Yao's transition has been helped by a translator and by the arrival in the US of his mother, who is living with him in Houston. His father was there for a while but returned to China and is expected back in the US next month"

 

It didn't take long for his parents to the visas. Money talks.

 

-- Tony

[Guest David]

Just read the Sunday newspaper.  It is about Yao Ming, the basketball player from China who is playing in the NBA now.

 

It said "Yao's transition has been helped by a translator and by the arrival in the US of his mother, who is living with him in Houston.  His father was there for a while but returned to China and is expected back in the US next month"

 

It didn't take long for his parents to the visas.  Money talks.

 

-- Tony   

I tend to think that letting Yao Ming into the country to play ball is actually worth the special treatment. The NBA is the only thing that a lot of Chinese people like about the USA, and if Yao Ming can make people less willing to hate our country, I say let him in!

 

 

Its already bad enough that the first thing people from China encounter when they immigrate to the U.S. is the f$##ed up INS... at least this way, Yao and his family don't have to come in contact with this national embarrassment of an agency, and hopefully will be better disposed to Americans in general.

[tonado]

I tend to think that letting Yao Ming into the country to play ball is actually worth the special treatment.  The NBA is the only thing that a lot of Chinese people like about the USA, and if Yao Ming can make people less willing to hate our country, I say let him in!

 

 

David,

 

I don't think people in China hate this country. They like our country. Yao Ming's presence in the NBA is definitely a plus for both countries.

 

Where are you, Uncle Sam (James)?

 

-- Tony

[AngryTexan]

As a lifelong resident of Houston, and a diehard Rockets fan, I am also happy that Yao Ming is here. However, as I was sitting in the Compaq Center watching his debut, I must say that I was a bit chagrined by the fact that his parents were there. How in the world can our government justify the special treatment given to sports stars and their families with respect to visa issuance, while keeping thousands of us seperated from our loved ones (in my case for over a year now). It's total bullshit!!!

Along those lines, I recently read an article in the New York Times about our dilemna. It turns out that my US Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison (Republican, of course), intervened on behalf of Dallas Mavericks owner, and billionaire, Mark Cuban, to get visas for some European players on his team so that they would be available for the season opener in November. Because I had written her office on two prior ocassions without even getting the common courtesy of a reply, or acknowledgement of my correspondence, I wrote her once again, asking if I had to be a billionaire to get her to help me. Of course, that inquiry went unanswered as well.

If there are any of my fellow Texans out there, please, please, please contact her office and ask why she can help a billionaire sports team owner, but not constituents whose lives have been put on hold indefinitely.

[Guest Marc y Yadamis]

Hi,

This is my first post here. I'm actually involved in a different part of this problem. My wife is Cuban, and we are awaiting security clearance also. I have been reading this site and G7 in an attempt to glean general information about the process.

Here is my read on what happened. It is based only on suspicion and what my common sense tells me. As the summer rolled around, and the anniversary of 9/11 was approaching, the government realized that they had done virtually nothing in terms of tightening up security in the area of immigration, both legal and illegal. By there own statistics, by August over 600,000 people had entered the US illegally since 9/11. They decided that they had to take some type of action. They stopped issuing visas before they had any set plan for doing the security checks. They then set out to build a process for these checks and clearances. This is what has caused the back log. Now they have finally worked out what they want to do. Once they clear the backlog I expect things will speed up considerably. We have all simply had the bad luck and poor timing to be on the bubble when it popped.

In terms of exactly who did this? Heck, there is plenty enough blame to go around. I'd guess that Justice was too slow in moving and someone (Ashcroft?, Dubya?) finally said "Whoa, we gotta do something, and RIGHT NOW!"

I could be completely off base on this, but it makes sense to me.

Marc

[rsun]

It's hard to say whether America is really that much better. When my wife and I have travelled around, she didn't find the US to be anything special. Basically Shanghai she has everything, and little old Newark Delaware isn't as big as Shanghai (not by about 14.9 million people). When we went to Sydney Austrialia, she was most impressed by that type of Western culture, we'll just have to see.

[rsun]

Here's another good one:

 

http://home.pacbell.net/diana_do/knowjack.htm

[tonado]

This is why our government is so busy doing other stuff instead of getting visas for our fiancees.

 

 

 

 

http://www.funforwards.com/flash/september...er02/saddam.swf

[tonado]

James,

 

I just tried it twice from different brower and it worked.