Tourism Gets Less Friendly

New visa rules for potential visitors to the U.S. are being implemented all over Central Europe. According to this Prague Post article, the regulations in the Czech Republic include mandatory interviews on a paid telephone line that costs the applicant 38 crowns per minute (about $1.40), a non-refundable $100 application fee, faxed-in documents, and much more. The paper found a Czech IT director who won a trip to the States on a TV show, but eventually cancelled his tickets after weeks of bureaucracy and expensive phone calls that rarely got through. "It was horrible," he said. Czech Senator Petr Smutny (whose name means "Peter Sad") remarked that "This goes too far." And the head of the Czech Parliament's Foreign Committee, Vladimir Lastuvka, is calling for reciprocal visa requirements to be imposed on Americans. Enjoy that cheap beer while you still can.

Link via PragueBlog.

Comments

[SM]

Got news for you. There is nothing out of the ordinary about any of this. A visa, and there are several kinds, typically "costs" anywhere between 200 and 1400 dollars. This does not include travel expenses incurred if you get called in for an interview etc. The paperwork includes the usual forms, ID ie birth certificates, copies of all pages of passports, marriage certificates, marriage photos etc etc etc &, of course, you get to line up outside the consulate for hours and hours, rain or shine. And all this was required even before 9-11. Contrary to myth travelling to the US has never been easy - at least not from non-G7 nations. Saudi Arabia is the exception - but that probably has more to do with Prince Bandar's parties than anything else.

[Plutarck]

Yeah, that's right, stay in your own damn country! We don't need your dirty money! We'll just spend more money on defense to whip our economy into shape, so HAH!

Just for the record, as a person who lives in a state where there is no income tax due to tourists paying sales taxes, I would very much like them to come and stay for a short while and then go away, leaving their dirty money with us, thank you very much.

[Matt Welch]

What's new, among other things, is funnelling the whole process through an automated phone system that works poorly & that you have to pay exorbitant rates for. Also, for what it's worth, I didn't hear a single story this Kafkaesque in seven years of living over there, which may be partly why Czech politicians are contemplating reciprocal action ... which is also new.

[Sean]

Fly to Germany, take a train to Czech. It's a lot less hassle, and you can buy a shitload of 25cent pints of Urquell once you're there.

[Anonymous]

give us your... oh nevermind! you can keep 'em 😀

[SM]

Alkali, Matt et all,

I dont know anything about what things were like in the Czech republic. What i meant was that there have always been elaborate and sometimes seemily arbitrary rules imposed on visa applicants from most(> 95%) countries. Does anyone remember reading an article in the NYTImes on just this topic pre 9-11 ? It said that consular officials, who were really only supposed to rubber stamp visa's which the State Department/INS/whoever clears, in practice routinely exercise their discretion to accept or reject applicants in strange ways. Apparently they also take into consideration, in addition to all the paperwork and facetime, things like the interviewees looks, general appearance etc - the article had this Brazilian being rejected because he wore earrings/tatoos. They consular guys called it, if i remember right, a "genetic quota", ie neatly dressed, goodlooking folks are more likely get in.
Boy am i glad i was born with a noble brow and square chin ...
The exception, contrary to NRO hysterics, is the Islamic Caliphate Kindgom of the House of Saudi Arabian Princely Monarchies. The same pukka fellows of a sterling kind with open invitations to a certain ranch in Texas.

[Johanka]

I hope the cheap beer is not the only reason why my native country, the Czech Republic, is so popular with American visitors. 🙂

[C.B.DeMille]

Say, Plutarck, are you close enough to those Florida beaches to be able to soak up some sun? (You need some.)

Johanka -- no, the cheap beer is not the only reason why the Czech Republic is popular with Americans. One of the main reasons is the quaint backdrops for many Hollywood movies.

Unfortunately, now that American actors, directors, producers, and film crew are soon going to have to pick up those pay phones and pay through the nose, I doubt whether that popularity will last very long.

Let's see -- for movie sets, Morocco's out; the Philippines are out; the Czech Republic will soon be out, too. What's left? Australia?

[Tim Stich]

Shit, I hope this numbskullery subsides by the time I make my next trip over to Czech. What does Vaclav Havel have to say about all of this? Just tell him to call Bush up and set him straight. Bush Senior that is. The other one probably doesn't remember Vaclav too well.

Repeat after me: "The Czechs are our friends. Beer is more important than oil."

[david f]

what do you expect where the major automobile is named a "pity" (Skoda). that opens it up to a ton of jokes: fiat and skoda have a joint venture: fiasko... ha ha.

still -- Johanka is right: Cesky Krumlov is amazing. the train ride from Prague to Vienna's franz josefs bahnhof (not s?dbahnhof) is also breathtaking. outside of prague, Luze for example, is a charming village. there's a ton of fantastic stuff. however, all of those germans on chuck bridge, singing, and acting like they're in the 60s is kind of a drag.

and Budvar is the best beer around... (Zipfer and Stiegl are close)

mmmmmmmmmm, Pivo....
drf

[alkali]

SM writes:

Got news for you. There is nothing out of the ordinary about any of this. A visa, and there are several kinds, typically "costs" anywhere between 200 and 1400 dollars. This does not include travel expenses incurred if you get called in for an interview etc. The paperwork includes the usual forms, ID ie birth certificates, copies of all pages of passports, marriage certificates, marriage photos etc etc etc &, of course, you get to line up outside the consulate for hours and hours, rain or shine. And all this was required even before 9-11.

A Czech relative of mine applied for and received a visa shortly before 9-11 and did not have anything like this kind of hassle. I think the local reaction reported in the Prague Post makes clear that this is something new.

[John]

If the Czechs want easy visas, they should discover oil and hand out engineering and construction contracts to Republican campaign contributors.

[Evan McElravy]

A Canadian friend of mine recently had to apply for a Czech visa. Not too much hassle apparently, though something like $75. But that was with a consulate a few blocks away (this was in Montreal). For most people, it would be significantly more trouble. Can't wait for Americans to get treated to the same.... I suspect, however, that the Czech Republic is more dependent on foreign tourism than the U.S. is.

[Jozef]

Czech republic and Slovakia still experience a significant brain drain (I should know; I was "drained" from Slovakia). However, due to the increasingly difficult US visa requirements, the vast majority of these highly skilled workers ends up in Canada, with the rest in Australia (my US visa expires in a year, and even though my employer wants to ask for an extension, I'm strongly considering taking the easy route and applying to either of those two countries instead). If the US really considers to apply the same rules to all countries, the only people who'd get in would be illegal Mexican immigrants, hardly the same kind of skilled workforce that would flock to Canada, Australia and the EU. In the long run, this may prove harmful to the US economy.

[Steve]

I would add to this that while, yes, applying for US visas from most of the world has not been easy for a long time, the anecdotal evidence suggests that more people are randomly being rejected or turned back at the border, even if their visas are properly issued and are in order. Clearly somebody has to have the discretion to do this. But it would be interesting to know if there was a specific policy to increase the number of these cases as a simple quota. My original point was that this might be a deliberate tactic to reduce the number of people applying from certain countries.

[Leo]

"this might be a deliberate tactic to reduce the number of people applying from certain countries."

Yeah, but from the Czech republic!!? Come on! They're our buddies!

[Steve]

"...our buddies..."

After President Klaus officially requested not long ago that the Czech Republic be removed from the list of countries comprising the "coalition of the willing," that might not be a view shared by beady eyed bureacrats in Homeland Security with too much discretionary power at their disposal. There is definitely some paying-back going on, no matter how many hands you see Bush shaking as he travels around.

Klaus' sole motivation in my opinion was just to reverse as much of Havel's policy as possible. Simple spite. Pity if this is the fallout.

[Campbell Jamie]

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[Mongin Glory]

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