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Immigration rules bug Brits
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Visa delays choke businesses as 'pervasive' problems persist
Kelly Griffith
Sentinel Staff Writer
September 10, 2006
DAVENPORT -- A "broken" immigration system is pushing some families oceans apart as rules tightened by terrorist fears create frustrating backlogs and other obstacles for foreign business owners in Central Florida.
The U.S. Embassy in London is taking about twice as long as it once did to hand out some travel and business visas and to process some visas for British citizens hoping to open businesses in the United States, embassy officials say.
Those delays are driving millions of dollars from the Central Florida economy as sales of businesses are delayed or fall through while sellers -- often Americans -- are frustrated by the lengthy process, says immigration attorney James LaVigne of Orlando, president of the local British-American Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security that issues "green cards" and temporary work permits, has "pervasive and serious" problems, including backlogs and prolonged processing times along with inconsistent decisions among offices, Prakash Khatri, an Orlando immigration attorney who is the agency's first ombudsman, said in his 2006 report to Congress.
The agency is in the process of drafting its formal response to Congress and would not comment on Khatri's report.
Gripes many British citizens have with the system that hands out travel visas have escalated in recent months, and fears are climbing after this summer's foiled terrorist plot against transatlantic airliners. The complaints include:
Changes after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, force holders of the popular E-2 business visa to return overseas to have it renewed in London instead of in the United States, as before. They say that is costly, unnecessary and time-consuming.
Vague rules that use words such as "substantial financial investment" when describing how a business must qualify for the E-2 visa. Some businesses that would have qualified a year ago no longer do so, LaVigne and others say.
State Department officials say they are scrutinizing applications more thoroughly because fraud became a problem, and some Brits were under the mistaken notion that any small business would qualify. Brits were not necessarily perpetuating the fraud but were often unwitting victims, being told they could buy just about any business and get an E-2 in the process.
Communication problems between different agencies that handle immigration issues. The State Department handles travel and business visas, while USCIS handles naturalization, green cards and some other work permits. A port-of-entry officer makes a last call.
Children of E-2 visa holders having to return home for good when they turn 21, something that has torn families apart, forcing them to choose between a successful business here and a child still in college who must return to a country he or she may have not lived in since childhood.
"We know the system is broken," LaVigne said.
The State Department, while acknowledging its embassy in London is taking about twice as long as it did previously to process visas, blames the delay on an increase in the volume of requests as well as an employee who had to miss work because of an emergency.
Officials also admit tighter scrutiny with requests.
They say plenty are still being approved, with 2,835 requests for E-2 visas made in London in 2005 and 2,815 of them approved -- a 99.3 percent approval rate. Officials don't have numbers for so far this year, but LaVigne said many are being rejected.
The recent plot to blow up airliners, which was foiled in Great Britain one month ago, has accelerated fears that things will get even more difficult for Brits trying to do business in America.
Visa woes
British citizens Linda and Dave Cass of Sarasota are navigating their second round of visa woes.
They have been waiting since November for Linda's paperwork showing she is in the country legally. Until it comes, she can't get a drivers license, open a bank account or do other basic things that require the documents. In August 2004, the couple tried to buy a pool- and lawn-care company, but the visa process took so long that the sellers couldn't keep waiting and finally closed the business.
One of the most sweeping changes made to the visa-approval process after 9-11 included a program called US-VISIT, which required biometrics data such as fingerprints and a digital rendering of the face, as well as an in-person interview, to be required of people requesting visas to the United States.
It wasn't for naught, officials say. Since the biometric processing was started in January 2004, more than 1,100 people have been arrested or denied admission to the United States for one reason or another.
Homeland Security officials now want the program expanded to include even more travelers, including some Canadians and green-card holders, and starting in January 2008, U.S. citizens are expected to be required to have a passport or other approved official documentation to re-enter the country.
"False documents are the currency of the terrorist trade," K. Jack Riley of Rand Corp., an expert on terrorism and security, told a U.S. House subcommittee last month.
Officials with the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security admit that security measures put into place have slowed things down. At an April 2006 hearing on visa-processing delays, federal officials admitted the 9-11 changes added to the complexity of workloads and "contributed to lengthy delays in processing."
Processing problems
Backlogs, though, are not confined to overseas or the visa department.
Orlando, for instance, had processing times at the USCIS office for green cards of 700 days, while some offices were under 90 days at one point, according to Khatri's ombudsman report. More than 1,000 people a day go to the Orlando office, which handles cases from immigrants in Brevard, Flagler, Lake, Marion, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, Sumter and Volusia counties.
In 2004, the agency reported 1.5 million backlogged cases, down from 3.5 million the year before, but the ombudsman's report says the decline is mostly because of redefinition of the word backlog rather than a true decline.
But personnel shifts have since decreased the Orlando wait of nearly 2 1/2 years for legalization petitions for people who are here with expired and temporary visas or no papers at all to just under two years, according to USCIS records.
While green cards affect those who want to stay in the States indefinitely, problems with the temporary E-2 is resulting in millions in potential sales of U.S. businesses sitting idle, LaVigne said. His firm alone is sitting on more than a million dollars in sales of local businesses because of E-2 hold-ups this year, he said. His business of processing new visa requests is down about 20 percent this year over last -- something he attributes to British discontent with the problem.
The problem doesn't seem to exist going in the other direction, experts say, as British authorities seem eager to assist immigrants who want to stay in their country if they are successful in business, although how the most recent terrorist threat there will affect things long term remain to be seen.
Figures released this month showed that 427,000 immigrants from the European Union, for instance, have registered to work in the United Kingdom in the past two years in a wave of migration coming largely from Poland.
Internet bulletin boards devoted to the American E-2 topic are riddled with negative stories of Brits in America. They complain of not only delays in processing, but mistakes and simply of being treated as "guilty of something" until proven innocent.
Red tape
One such story is that of Ian and Sue Ward.
The couple came to America first in 1990 as vacationers and in 1998, Ian Ward moved to Florida to open a business, expanding a vacation-home rental firm he was already operating in London. Sue and their son, Gavin Ward, were to follow on his visa as his dependents.
Ian Ward, however, died of cancer in May, and Gavin Ward's paperwork was tied up so long with red tape that he turned 21 before his visa could be approved. His mother's, however, was approved. The family argues that Gavin's paperwork should have gone through at the same time the rest of the family's did since he was a dependent at the time.
Since his father died, Gavin's visa request apparently died too, and he now does not qualify for the same visa, or possibly any visa, since he is no one's dependent now. LaVigne, president of the local British-American Chamber of Commerce, has agreed to take his case, saying the young man should have been grandfathered in.
Meanwhile, Sue Ward is trying to deal with probate issues, operating the family's businesses -- which have mushroomed into four companies -- eight full-time employees and finding Ian's final resting place. She said she needs her son's help as she does all this in a state of grief.
He, however, is not eligible to return to America until next year since he already used the 90 days allotted to him during his father's illness.
"You have a humane society for animals in your country. What about people?" said Sue Ward, who along with her husband started a Web site and informational group called Expats' Voice for others dealing with similar issues to share concerns.
The group, which has 156 members, had its first meeting recently in Davenport and hopes to raise awareness of issues facing not only Brits but any law-abiding person from any country who is having visa problems in America.
Recent terrorist threats, which they fear will slow visa processing even more, make the expats afraid things will never improve if they don't get vocal.
"I shouldn't have to use my husband to get heard," Sue Ward said.
SENTINEL SPECIAL REPORT
Kelly Griffith can be reached at
kgriffith@orlandosentinel.com or 863-422-5908.
