U.S. tightens entry controls for foreigners

The U.S. government decided to stiffen entry controls for foreigners planning to visit the country and ordered its embassies all around the world to conduct one-on-one interviews with most visa applicants before their passports are stamped, an action that has raised quite a number of eyebrows within the tourist industry in anticipation to the negative impact it could have.

A State Department spokesperson said up to now non-immigrant visa applicants were bound to meet with a consular official, but that procedure was often brushed aside in the past.

Right now, “the decision is to use the same yardstick everywhere for everybody, to review those cases in which personal interviews are being discarded,” he said.

Stuart Patt, a spokesman for the Consular Affairs Desk at the State Department pointed out all visa applicants in general will be asked about their destinations and activities in the country.

Administration officials expect the new measure will thwart terrorists’ efforts to get visas for entering the U.S., Mr. Patt explained.

Sources from the State Department indicated the order was sent to 221 American embassies and consulates overseas and will be applicable to 90 percent of all visa seekers from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

The measure won’t be enforced on children under 16 years of age and people over 60 years old, nor on Canadians and most Europeans.

The action is now part of a tighter surveillance on foreigners in the country ordered by U.S. authorities following the 9/11 terrorist attacks that took the lives of over 3,000 people.

Those attacks were perpetrated by nineteen terrorists, fifteen of them from Saudi Arabia, who hijacked four aircraft and rammed two of those planes into the WTC Twin Towers in New York, plus a third one against the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth jetliner crashed in a rural area in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania.

A probe conducted by the General Accounting Office –a congressional body- determined that at least 13 of the 15 Saudi hijackers were never interviewed by consular officials before getting their visas.

On the other hand, all of the alleged terrorists got their entry permits through personal wheeling and dealing with travel agents.