the_ed_dawg's Journal: The USA and International Visas

I'll admit it. I have a slightly different way of looking at things. I lived at Camp Zama, Japan (Tokyo area) for three years and the southern USA for another twenty. I've seen wildly different cultures and feel that I can take pretty much whatever gets thrown at me.

Then, I talk to my office-mate at school and hear about how he can't go home. Apparently, Chinese students who return to China sometimes cannot get return visas even to complete their degree. He looked for a way around that by trying to get visitation visas for his parents, who are well-educated and reasonably successful, to visit Indiana. Their visas were denied.

He asked me why that happened. I tried to explain some of the reasons why the USA does some of the things that it does, but it just sounds stupid when I say them -- increased security due to terrorist threat (his parents are in their 60s), drag on the economy (they're successful), looking for immigration (have no interest in leaving their hometown), etc. While I understand why the US government does these things, I still can't see why he is trapped here, alone, for what is going on four years.

We also talked about Chinese and American relations. It was interesting to see what he thought about the whole thing. Sure, it's difficult when one side is communist and the other side is democratic (okay, republic... but not many people know the difference, anyway). He just hopes that the communists might yield a little freedom for the average Chinese people to gain American favor. It really gives you a perspective on what we do have here, as much as the Slashdot crowd complains about it. We can't mod our X-Boxes, but the Chinese can't complain about their government.