Tourist Visa

I know that I should be writing down all the "adventures" and such, but sometimes it's these little conversations that really leave you with the most intense impressions. In the broken english which my host father speaks, he told me about his experiences with attempting to obtain a 2-month tourist visa to the United States.

It's taken the equivalent of one year's salary for my host father's 2 interviews for a tourist visa at the US Embassy in Kathmandu. And in case you're wondering, each interview is a non-refunadable $131 US (so we can guess that his salary is about $260, comparable to figures I've read and heard). In addition it also cost him money to collect all the financial documents for presentation at the interview. For example, it costs 1000 rupees (only about $6.75 US, but that is a substantial amount of money here, so much so that if I have a 1000 rupee bill, I have trouble spending it because it is such a large bill they can't make change for it) to get a simple bank statement. Sadly, when he brought the papers to his interview, they rejected him without even looking at them.

He is applying for a non-complicated tourist visa to visit some of the many US and Canadian volunteers that he has hosted at his house through the years and would legitimately come back to Nepal. He is not trying to sneak over illegally. He has a wife, three children, a home, land, a job in Kathmandu, and a shop---he's not going to just cut and run. Plus he just loves Nepal.

The first time the interviewer gave him the visa interview in Nepalese and so naturally he answered in Nepalese, only to be denied him a visa because they said his English wasn't good enough. The second time they denied him for I don't know what reason, but he said he was so mad that he almost punched the interviewer right there. He said 3 or 4 officials held him back. I don't think he's planning on trying again anytime soon, but I know that if had punched the interviewer he definitely would never set a foot in the US.

We always joke around and so I thought that he knew I was joking: I said that since I'm an American citizen already, I would go down there and punch their lights out (I mean, really, look at me. . . who's going to be scared of me coming? So he would have to know that it's a joke, right?). I would actually probably get arrested for assault of a federal official, but my host father was like, okay, we'll go down to the embassy and I'll show you who to get. Ha ha.

I understand that the United States has to be cautious of who they let inside their borders, but this to me was beyond ridiculous. I mean, I've only known the man for a few weeks, but I know him well enough to know that he's not going to leave his family behind. And that he's definitely no threat to national security. And he was rejected without even a full appraisal of his application. I love America, but the conversation left me troubled and disheartened.

He did say that he could buy a visa for what I think what he said was a million rupees but he said he wouldn't do it. He doesn't have that kind of money (though he is okay financially, he is definitely NOT rich: he pays a lot of extra money for his children to go to good schools, and medicine for his wife). I asked him if it was illegal and he said no, but he said it wasn't good to do that and that he wasn't going to.