I used to think death was the great leveller. Not any longer. Not after I had been subjected to the "third degree" at the US Consulate. And I had only been applying for a non-immigration visa for a press trip! Fourth Estate? No estate is more like it!
But I am getting ahead of myself. The experience of a lifetime began a couple of weeks ago when my editor told me to go to the Big Apple on a three-day assignment. I was thrilled. Who would not be? But when I heard it was just a three-day trip of which more than a day would be spent on the airplane and another 10 to 12 hours sleeping, the excitement went down with a thud. Oh well, I am lying.
I got on with my e-application, paid up a mandatory fee of Dh484 (non-refundable) and attached the statement, along with a letter of employment plus a salary certificate from my office. It didn't stop there. I also had to attach a statement of my bank account for the past six months. It must be to verify if I had been paid a couple of million dollars to smuggle in RDX or some such, I thought. Poor innocent me.
Queued up
On the day of the interview, I braved the traffic between Sharjah and Dubai and reached there promptly at 7.30am. First we were queued up outside in a portacabin, our bodies and applications checked and verified. Then we were lined up like cattle for slaughter for another round of searching and verification. And then another. All this took more than a couple of hours. Take a number, submit your passport and application, and then wait again. In the meantime you forgo breakfast, coffee or even a trip to the restroom. Not surprisingly, an elderly lady keeled over. To their credit, the consulate staff summoned a nurse and a wheelchair and the lady was taken to a hospital.
The interviews were an education. Oh yes, everybody gets to hear, and partake in the humiliation. A young Emirati couple who wanted to honeymoon in the US were asked why they wanted to visit the US. Their reply was cut in half by the interrogator who said, sorry, but you don't qualify. That was it. Another couple who wanted to visit were told they had not researched where they wanted to visit properly. Talk of straitjackets.
When my turn came, I was prepared for a volley of questions. I was asked none. In spite of the invitation of the hosting company, evidence of my return in the form of booked tickets and a mere two-day itinerary, my interrogator who looked as if he had just walked out of an audition for American Idol merely asked for my bank account statements and said, "Sir, you don't qualify." My protests were met with a stone-faced "My decision is made, Sir."
I did not have the presence of mind to ask him why I was not told earlier that I could apply for the visa only if I had a specific amount as bank balance. Instead, I tried to explain to him that journalists, as a rule, did not make enough money to have fat bank balances, especially when they live in rented apartments and have school-going kids.
The problem was clear: how was he to know that I was not going to New York for three days for the explicit purpose of finding a job and settling down there? Perhaps by reading my application and letters of support I had submitted. I remembered reading that many Americans don't read that often. Ah, that must be it!
I wondered about the lady who fainted. The state of her application is anybody's guess.
