Here is an article from the
Los Angeles Times (registration required) which I found interesting as yet one more pieve of evidence that the Bush administration is (a) incompetent and (b) destroying our country.
Post-9/11 delays in obtaining visas are driving away foreign clients and talent.
I'm excerpting a few choicer bits but do read the entire piece.
The Bush administration's effort to tighten the borders has meant millions of dollars in lost revenue and added costs for Fairbanks' employer, Dresser-Rand Control Systems. Customers resent lengthy delays in obtaining U.S. visas, and the company's foreign-born engineers are routinely delayed and scrutinized at U.S. airports. At least one foreign firm has severed relations with the company. [...]
U.S. and foreign hospitals are building medical centers in cities such as Singapore and Shanghai for wealthy patients who no longer can or want to travel to the United States. [...]
Wealthy foreigners are shopping, buying vacation homes and investing elsewhere. That has contributed to a plunge in direct foreign investment in the United States, which dropped to $40 billion last year from $72 billion the year before, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
More below the fold.
Visa delays alone have cost U.S. exporters $30.7 billion in lost contracts, delayed shipments and other areas, according to a study released in June by Reinsch's group and seven other leading U.S. business organizations. [...]
Aossey couldn't get visas this year for any of his top dozen foreign clients to visit his facility and attend the nation's biggest restaurant trade show, in Chicago. Last year, only two were able to get into the country. "I've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in business over the last three years," said the frustrated 62-year-old, who recently lost an order for $175,000 worth of bakery equipment to a Belgian firm because his Saudi customer couldn't get its Egyptian engineer into the United States. [...]
Applications for visas to visit Dresser-Rand's headquarters disappeared into a bureaucratic black hole. The company's foreign-born employees also had problems reentering the United States, particularly if they were returning from a country deemed a security risk. One of its engineers, an Egyptian who has been working legally in the United States for four years, has been delayed at the airport for as long as 10 hours on numerous occasions. With Dresser charging $2,000 a day for the services of an engineer, the losses add up quickly. [...] "Enough is enough," Churbock said. "We're being choked by these policies, and Americans don't have a lot of friends left in the world." [...]
Angered by U.S. security rules, the Brazilian government retaliated by scrutinizing U.S. visitors more closely. After running into lengthy delays getting visas for its U.S.-based engineers to visit Brazil, Dresser-Rand executives hired eight local engineers for its rapidly expanding business with Petrobras, the Brazilian government-backed oil company. They are also considering hiring someone in Asia to service their Malaysian clients. "Our customers are asking us: 'Can we do this elsewhere?' " said Fairbanks. " [...]
The number of foreign visitors plummeted from 50.9 million in 2000 to 40.4 million in 2003, representing a $22.5-billion loss. This year, organizers of a conference for Asian insurance executives moved the event from Hawaii to Hong Kong out of concern that they would not be able to get visas for the 3,000 participants, most of them Chinese. Hawaii lost more than $17.3 million in visitor spending and $1.4 million in taxes. [...]
Last year, James Gimzewski, an expert on nanotechnology, was stranded for nearly a month trying to get his visa renewed so he could return to his research lab at UCLA. He said his wait would have been much longer if he hadn't bought an $8,000 one-way ticket from Zurich, Switzerland, to Los Angeles with a stop in Quebec, where his immigration attorney located a sympathetic U.S. consular official.
Gimzewski, a British citizen, was recruited several years ago to help establish the California NanoSystems Institute, a collaborative venture of UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. U.S. high-tech firms believe that nanotechnology, the science of making products smaller, lighter and more powerful, will drive the next revolution in industrial development, much as the Internet transformed communication.[...]
The number of foreign students admitted to U.S. graduate schools this fall was down 18% from the previous year, according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools. [...[
"They might as well put out a sign, 'No admittance to the U.S.,' " said Alvin Preiser, president of a small West Virginia firm that manufactures high-tech coal-testing equipment. He said he lost a $250,000 order to competitors in Europe last year because his Chinese buyer couldn't get a U.S. visa.
This country is doing so good a job at destroying itself Al Qaeda could just sell tickets.