February 04, 2005

Stringent US visa procedures are getting American companies increasingly worried over business losses to competitors from Asia and Europe, despite government assurances that the situation is under control.

William Reinsch, president of the US National Foreign Trade Council, said savvy European and Asian countries were welcoming with open arms companies whose executives faced visa difficulties in the United States.

He said foreigners would not easily discard the perception that they were unwelcome in the United States, citing difficulties they faced entering the country for education, business or tourism after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"It is going to take a long time to overcome that kind of perception," Reinsch told a forum organized by the Global Business Dialogue Inc. in which US State Department and Homeland Security Department officials participated.

He effectively shrugged off claims by Janice Jacobs, the deputy assistant secretary for visa services, and Lora Ries, the policy director for immigration, that the government was slowly getting a handle on the problem.

Reinsch, whose council is a leading advocacy group for the US private sector, said he had met company representatives only last month and that the problem had not been contained.

"There were idiosyncratic improvements here and there around the edges but I think the problem persists," he said.

A recent study by the Santangelo Group, a Washington-based global business consulting firm, said that business visa processing delays and denials cost the US economy at least 30 billion dollars during the year up to the summer of 2004.

It cited difficulties faced by business travellers from India, China, Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea (news - web sites), among other economies.

Microsoft boss Bill Gates (news - web sites), speaking at the World Economic Forum (news - web sites) in Davos just this week, complained that stringent visa rules had a negative effect on his company's competitiveness in the global software market.

"There has been a 35 percent drop in Asians coming to our computer science departments ... It really is a very bad thing for a very key area," he was quoted saying. The US position as the "global IQ magnet of the world" is being threatened, he warned.

Reinsch said US companies were finding it difficult to get customers into the country to negotiate deals or attend trade shows.

They also faced problems sending executives for training or personally participating in collaborative software or hi-tech ventures.

One American company quoted its Chinese client saying "we just don't like to come to America anymore, it is too hard, too complicated, we are not welcome," Reinsch said.

He cited another example where a group of Chinese engineers, who could not obtain a US visa, were wooed by a European company with personal help from the ambassador of the country involved.

In another case, a US company which temporarily notched up a huge contract had to subsequently surrender it to its European branch after failing to obtain a visa for its foreign client.

"What an increasingly large number of companies are going to do in response to these kind of problems is simply to avoid the problem by moving meetings, collaboration and facilities elsewhere," Reinsch said.

In the long term, for example, companies put off by the visa problems are going to set up research centers in China, where there are already 400 such centers operating, he said.

Reinsch said if visa approvals were to be entrusted to officials who were concerned only about security and not business concerns, "I would suggest that it is going to take a long time to fix the perception that has arisen because tweaking isn't going to affect the perception."

Source : http://www.bday.co.za/