So, getting a US Student visa has never been easy. The difference, I think, is that now it is approaching the point of impossibility.

Possibly true. I think a lot has to do with the difficulty of finding jobs in the US today, or the impossibility of being able to switch easily if you don’t like it.

I have serious difficulty believing this, but I’ve heard that IIT-M (Indian Institute of Technology, Madras) this year didn’t send any grad students to the US.

FWIW, I’m one of those typical US educated (Carnegie Mellon) brown goras, now back home (Chennai).

Yup, a horror story I heard recently brought that home in a way. Someone I know had his dad sent back from the airport on Oct 30 or thereabouts, the reason, or excuse, was not given, but apparently was the Iraq visit he’d made for religious purposes in 2001.

Lod Dobbs keeps ranting about outsourcing, which is only very marginally justifiable, but now he’s complaining about H1s, that guy doth protest too much I say.

This is the price America pays for spreading Americana all over the world. Global American values make someone in Iraq want to come to America, and naturally get pissed off when they are denied entry – America represents a lifestyle that many live inside and outside of it.

And, Americans fail to understand why people get pissed off when they are denied entry, duh?

I wouldn’t really care to be in Turkmenistan now would I? Or would I care if travel to Turkmenistan become impossible?

I am, of course, more than happy people will choose the UK over the US for whatever reason.

Case in point: I am in Canada on a student visa. Last weekend, my parents were in town visiting and we decided to go to Niagra Falls. We crossed over into the U.S., but on the way back I realized that my visa was in my desk up in Toronto.

I was then sent into the immigration office. I expected no good to come of the whole thing and to remain trapped in a legal limbo. Instead, when the line finally got me up to the immigration official, he ran my Ontario driver’s license and was able to pull up all of the information on my Visa: When I had gotten my visa for my MA year, when I had gotten it renewed last summer, and what port of entry I had used to get into Canada in the summer of 2003. He then let me back into Canada. Now then, you are never going to encounter such efficiency from the INS. The result is that Canadian immigration is delightfully stress free when compared to America.

Thebit,

You should still come on over to the U.S. of A. Our immigration officials really aren’t that scary. Most of the time when they harass people, it’s because they’re petty bureaucrats doing petty bureaucrat things. I’m about as white as can be and find that every now and again you encounter one who will milk the little bit of power he has for all it’s worth.