The Art of Rejection: Surveillance of Visitor Visas
It’s no secret that applying for visas is a rigorous process. To reduce threats and illegal activity, authorities impose stringent screening standards to ensure the safety of their nation. Yet, what criteria are these decisions made on, and how valid are those claims? Where do we draw the line between protection vs. discrimination?
The Current State
Visitor visas are nonimmigrant visas for persons who want to enter the United States temporarily for business (visa category B-1), for tourism (visa category B-2), or for a combination of both purposes (B-1/B-2). — U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs
To be qualified for a visitor visa, applicants must demonstrate:
1. the purpose of their trip is to enter the U.S. for business, leisure, or medical treatment
2. they plan to remain within the U.S. for a specific, limited period
3. evidence of funds to cover expenses while in the U.S.
4. they have a residence outside the U.S. as well as other binding ties that will ensure their return at the end of the visit.
Every month, U.S. Embassies & Consulates around the world receive an overwhelming number of applications. In just March 2021 alone, the U.S. issued a total of 260,493 non-immigrant visas globally. Although, when analyzing this data, it was easy to notice the uneven distribution of visa allocations across nationalities.
Check out this list of refusal rates by nationality in 2020.
In reference to the map above, we can see that refusal rates globally are not equal. Demographics can play a major role in skewing an application outcome. But why? In the qualifications stated earlier, nationality is not included. This reveals that there is more at play than just the qualifications listed on the consulate websites.
Congratulations… you have been rejected!
Ineligible. Unqualified. Denied. After months of gathering paperwork, paying processing fees, and preparing for interviews… those are not the words you want to hear. It’s a frustrating process that is both costly and time-consuming. Yet, many who labor through it come out unsuccessful, so they are forced to wonder: what happened?
Case Study: 2017 African Global Economic & Development Summit
In 2017, an estimated 100 delegates from African countries were invited to attend the three-day African Global Economic and Development Summit hosted at the University of Southern California. The goal of the conference was to foster partnerships and connections between African nations and the U.S. Invitees ranged from government officials to filmmakers.
Yet, no one from Africa ended up attending.
How could partnerships be made if there was no one to partner with? How could we learn more if there was no one to learn from? Where did it go wrong?
The organizer of the event, Mary Flowers, said that “Every year, we invite countries from all over Africa to summit with American businesses.” And every year, a substantial number of those invited — often around 40% — get their requests for business travel visas denied. But this year was different with a 100% denial rate. To investigate what happened, Flowers reached out to the invitees to share aspects of their application experience.
You might expect the typical questions to be asked: purpose of visit, place of accommodation, how you intend to finance your trip, etc. But this year, the invited delegates told Flowers that they were asked otherwise, such as:
“‘How many children do you have? What are their ages?
Other attendees were given forms after their unsuccessful appointment where they found that one of the qualifications listed was having children in their home country.
These types of questions give applicants the opportunity to establish “strong ties” to their home country. By having these connections, it indicates to the visa interviewer that the applicant has a reason to return home after visiting the United States, therefore reducing the probability that the visa holder will overstay their visit. This means that childless men were more likely to be scrutinized during the visa application process. While, on the other hand, men with children were heavily questioned about their family to ensure they were not misrepresenting their ties back home. So regardless of family situation, all the applicants were thoroughly examined. A lose-lose situation.
Case Study: U.S. Embassy in the Philippines
In 2013, a particular pattern emerged regarding denied visa applicants in the Philippines. A blog post revealed that, in order to increase visa processing efficiency, the U.S. Embassy of the Philippines was profiling applicants on who they considered a ‘high flight risk’. These profile characteristics were based on a statistical model that was created from past applicant data. It was found that if you were a single, female, under the age of 40, and had no college degree — your visa interview would swiftly end with the verdict: “you are not qualified”.
And when applicants protested to ask about their ineligibility, the U.S. Embassy replied that according to Section 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act:
“This law requires consular officers to presume that nonimmigrant visa applicants intend to immigrate unless they can demonstrate that their familial, social, professional, and economic ties to the Philippines are compelling enough for them to return after a temporary stay in the United States. Unfortunately, you were unable to overcome the presumption of immigrant intent”.
In summary, it basically means that before a person’s application has even been read, they are already considered ineligible. Historically, the Philippines has been known to have cases of Filipinos who fail to return home after being granted a visitor visa. In 2013, the same year the blog post was published, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 340,000 illegal aliens from the Philippines residing in the U.S. Yet, to presume that every applicant has immigrant intent is, I believe, quite extreme. How does one make a “compelling enough” case? To render every woman that matches a certain demographic as ineligible means that their battle is done before they even had the chance to fight it. And it’s hard to fight an uphill battle if people think you belong at the bottom.
Travel Bans: it’s nothing personal?
Within the first few months of 2020, as the COVID-19 virus began to infect nations across the world, many countries and their authorities took swift action to close their borders and limit air travel. As neighboring countries succumbed to the virus, authorities made these restrictions not only to deter their residents from leaving but to also prevent potential outbreaks from incoming travelers. These changes were necessary for combating the spread of the virus. Although, with the implementation of travel bans, it seemed as if some countries were given a harder time than others, while others had a free pass — with no factual evidence as to why/why not certain restrictions and protocols were placed.
For example, when the U.S. started executing travel bans, they had initially left out European countries, even though the CDC had already declared the EU as high-risk. U.S. policymakers were quick to halt travel from China (Feb. 2, 2020), but took delayed action towards the EU (Mar. 13, 2020). Yet, Pres. Donald Trump continued to blame China as the source of the virus in America.
After analyzing flight tracking data, it was found that most of the COVID-19 cases in New York City could be traced back to travelers from Europe. Later, the CDC also reached the same conclusions. Once travel bans on the EU were placed, it was too late. The virus had already infiltrated the U.S. and was circulating.
Reflecting on this, many speculated that the travel bans were racially motivated, as opposed to being objective decisions. With Trump’s voiced out dislike for China, we can see how these racial biases (unconscious or not), have played a role in swaying pivotal decisions.
Although this is not explicitly related to visitor visas, policies such as travel bans in the United States have been able to reveal — and even enforce — biases that have been ingrained into our systems. These policies continue to segregate and discriminate against certain groups. Furthermore, in this example, this clouded judgment also resulted in the compromise of the American public health.
Cut the people out!
From what we have seen so far, it seems that the root issue of it all comes down to human bias — interviewers/policymakers making subjective decisions based on discriminatory assumptions. So let’s take out all the humans and just stick to the processing algorithm instead? Bad idea.
Of course, U.S. Immigration cannot publicly publish their visa processing criteria for us to analyze, but here’s what we do know… and why automated processes are not bias-free either.
Check. Double-check. Triple-check.
“When a foreign national applies for a nonimmigrant visa at a U.S. consulate abroad, the applicant’s name is run through a name-check system referred to as the Consular Lookout and Support System (CLASS)” — Dinsmore & Shohl LLP.
As part of the visa process, all applicants are run through CLASS. Types of personal identifiable information that is collected about the applicant include personal address, gender, physical description, and financial information.
Among other things, one thing that I didn’t expect to see was that physical description is a consideration when deciding whether someone is a threat. This is problematic because systems such as facial recognition software are known to be unreliable and inaccurate, especially so when evaluating those from minority groups.
Racial bias in facial recognition software: What travelers should know as TSA, CBP expand programs
If an applicant’s name is flagged by CLASS, it can trigger a request for a Security Advisory Opinion (SAO). Although, U.S. Consulates have the authority to request an SAO on any visa applicant, regardless of whether their name was flagged by CLASS. So essentially, even being cleared by CLASS does not necessarily mean that you are in the clear.
In addition, although declared as classified information, it is said that any applicant that has a connection to the following (predominantly Muslim) countries are automatically subject to an SAO: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. This requires Condor clearance — of which the criteria is (of course) classified.
Read more about Security Advisory Opinions here.
Guilty until proven innocent
Furthermore, apart from an SAO, another security check barrier that many face is the NCIC Criminal clearance. As stated by the International Office of UC Berkeley and many other university websites, they warn that:
“Unfortunately, for those with common names (Smith, Kim, Mohammad, etc.) false hits are occurring with increased regularity. An NCIC clearance can take four to six weeks to process. Approximately seven million names have been dumped into the system, and about half of them are Latinx, resulting in a large number of false hits and delays for persons with common Latinx names”.
Moreover, automation isn’t necessarily more efficient either as false hits increase visa processing time .If we were to remove humans altogether from the process, it would result in the further marginalization of minority groups on a disproportionate scale. As stated above, of the seven million names in the database, why are 50% of Latinx origin when only an estimated 8.4% of the world population are Latinx? To think that you may be flagged as a terrorist, just because of your name, shows that these systems are not built on trust, but are built on guilt. You are guilty until proven innocent. Large institutions are aware of the unfairness embedded in these systems — even warning their communities about it — yet why do they still exist?
Who gets to choose what ‘high-risk’ names are inputted into the database? And on what grounds are they categorized as ‘high-risk’? Systems like these are flawed. Those in power are gatekeepers that prevent those below them from reaching opportunities that can better their lives.
For safety and good measure, keeping a level of skepticism is important. But as we have seen, the visa application process is characterized by racial bias and unnecessary cynicism. Will there ever be a way to objectively evaluate visa applicants? Perhaps we won’t. So how do we reduce the discriminatory assumptions without compromising security? How do we strike a balance?
