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Fortress America's
Chilly Hello
As the US tightens its borders and starts denying visas in record numbers, many travelers are saying `Why even bother going at all?'
By David Johnston
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Four times a week a Japan Airlines 747 from Sao Paulo, Brazil, lands in New York City on the way to Tokyo, but since August the planes have each been carrying 100 fewer passengers because of hastily imposed new rules, introduced in early August, to deal with threats from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
For many foreign travelers, a visa is now required to change planes in the US while traveling between most countries, a rule affecting 47 airports.
In the year before Sept. 11, 2001, about 1.6 million people a year changed planes in the US on their way between two other countries, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.
In the 12 months that followed, the number of these in-transit passengers fell to about 614,000. Passenger counts have fallen further since August, airlines say, because people from all but 27 countries, including Canada, Japan and Western European nations, must now obtain a visa.
Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security secretary, announced in August that "specific credible threats" were behind what he described as aggressive action to reduce the chances that a terrorist could use a change of planes to slip into the US.
As the government makes it harder to get into the US, many people are changing planes in Mexico and Canada instead, which costs American airport jobs and may result in fewer flight options for Americans traveling overseas.
Tony Ciavolella, a spokesman for Kennedy Airport, said that "we are a little anxious that Japan Airlines may cancel and reroute" its flights between Japan and Brazil because of the sharp decline in passengers caused by the new visa rules.
Carol Anderson, a spokeswoman for Japan Airlines, said no decision had been made yet on whether to drop Kennedy or reduce the flights there that serve Brazilians.
The international airports in Dallas, Houston and Los Angeles are also major way stations affected by the new rules.
American Airlines ranked first among airlines landing in the US between two foreign airports, with 93,328 in-transit passengers last year, according to the Homeland Security Department, followed by Continental at 56,024, Japan Airlines at 45,908, Varig at 32,354, Iberia at 32,354 and Delta at 23,396.
Brazil has the largest number of in-transit passengers, followed by residents of Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines and Peru.
Iberia, the Spanish airline, has threatened to pull out of Miami, where customers from Central America and the Caribbean switch to jumbo jets for flights to Madrid. In-transit passengers are required to pass through customs and security screening, causing delays of up to four hours in Miami.
Florida Governor Jeb Bush has taken up the airline's cause with Homeland Security officials. Iberia wants passengers to be able to stay in the secure in-transit lounge area between flights without clearing customs.
Many people from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, southern Mexico and other places are being denied or are not willing to apply for transit visas, said Jaime Perez-Guerra, an Iberia spokesman. No flights at Miami have been canceled, he said, but some Central American passengers have started connecting through Mexico City instead.
The screening is needed to make sure that each in-transit passenger who arrives gets on a departing airplane, said Greg Palmore, a spokesman for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Homeland Security Department.
He said that because of complaints from some airlines, the security regime was being reviewed.
The State Department has also tightened up visa rules for tourists and business travelers. It used to be that most people in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe could get a 90-day visa by documenting their employment and reasons for visiting. But the State Department now requires that each applicant, except from the 27 countries, be interviewed in person.
For South Koreans, this means that what had been a two or three-day wait for a visa is now a seven-week wait, said Rick Webster, director of government affairs for the Travel Industry Association.
He said the new rules were a major reason that Brazilians have reduced their travel to the US by 45 percent over the last two years and are instead increasingly going to Europe.
Viera Viskupova, a spokeswoman at the Slovak Embassy in Washington, said the new visa rules inspired a negative impression of the US in many people, especially the young.
She said Slovaks wanting a visa must now pay a nonrefundable $100 application fee, ride a bus as long as six hours to reach the US Embassy in Bratislava, wait in line for up to seven hours and then get a one-minute interview.
"The interview is not too harsh, but it can be humiliating," Viskupova said, especially for young people who want to visit relatives in the US but are denied because they are students or work only part time.
The US typically does not explain the reasons a visa application is rejected, she said.
Webster said that at a travel show in St. Louis recently, two Czech brothers told him that they were giving up on trying to run tours to the US because so many people were being turned down for tourist visas. One problem was that the visa application of the US asks applicants what military service they performed, but Czech law makes it a crime to disclose military service, he said.
"The brothers said they have switched to sending people on tours to Canada," Webster said. "They told me that the Canadians not only get people visas in no time, but the Canadian government even offers to help with trip planning."
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