Almost all visa applicants to U.S. may require interviews under to new plan, reports WSJ

The State Department plans to conduct face-to-face interviews with almost everyone seeking a visa to enter the United States, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The major policy change, details of which are still being worked out, is designed to plug holes in antiterrorism efforts and address congressional criticism of lax consular operations abroad, the WSJ report said. But it already is raising concern among business, tourism and educational groups, who fear it will considerably slow a process they already consider cumbersome, the report added.

The change will greatly increase the workload of the country’s 200-plus visa-issuing embassies and consulates, which processed 8.3 million visa applications and approved 5.7 million in fiscal year 2002.

WSJ quoted administration officials as saying that they don’t track the percentage of applicants interviewed. But they say it is far less than 100 percent, with fewer than half the applicants being questioned in countries that have relatively high standards of living and are deemed unlikely to produce many illegal immigrants or terrorists, such as South Korea.

Under the new policy, “you’re probably going to be looking at 90 percent of the cases being interviewed,” Stuart Patt, a State Department spokesman, was quoted as saying.

“We’re trying to get a more uniform approach around the world, but still offer some local variations. The new policy will affect some of our visa-issuing posts very significantly.”

The few exceptions to the policy will depend “on the experience we have with that country’s travelers violatingtheir visas in the past and workload considerations,” State Department spokes-man Patt was quoted as saying in the report.

The new policy will not affect citizens from 27 countires, many in Europe, who by law don’t need visas for tourist or business travel, or from Canada, who don’t need visas for most kinds of travel, the report said. Elsewhere, visa laws require personal interviews for all applicants, but allow consulates and embassies to waive that requirement if it is determined that the visitor doesn’t present a security risk.

The visa process came under sharp criticism after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., because all 19 hijackers had obtained visas to enter the U.S.

At least 13 hadn’t been interviewed, three were able to overstay their visas and two belatedly were discovered to be on the government’s terrorist “watch list.”

(Compiled from news dispatches by Shaji Iype)