签证经验及对签证制度的建议

通过我父母的签证所感：
1，—————
背景：
我博士毕业，已经OPT在作博士后，邀请爸妈参加毕业典礼。独生子，2000来美，回国
两次。爸妈分别被拒3次，两次，分别是2003，2005（妈单独签），2007年四月9日。
过了一个月再签，5月7号星期一签过了。

特殊点(highlight?)：
4月9号没签过后，想赶着再签一次，给使馆发传真，说父母年岁大了，并且要赶着来参
加毕业典礼，希望再签能够约早一点。使馆传真到美国回复说不是人命关天就不给特别
办理。
4月13号开始和议员联系，后来4月23号拿到了支持信。他们也传真给使馆了。使馆还给议员办公室回信了。议员办公室又给我来信把使馆的回复告诉我（可惜这封信没有来得及给我爸
妈带去，不过还好他们签过了）。我爸妈说给签证官看了议员的信。
4月17号网上和北京使馆签证官网聊，质疑他们的签证程序，觉得有这个沟通管道还是进步多了。
5月7号，在黑人女签证官那里通过，仔细看了我的申诉信，议员支持信等等。
目前，已经起草了一封要求他们改进父母签证过程的信，准备在这里咨询意见后发给使馆以及议员。

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2，

一些详细过程：
给本州的两个senator和附近的一个congresswoman (实验室美国同学说此人比较热心且liberal,而且house rep. 管辖的人少,所有可能有希望会帮忙)发了电子邮件,看会不会回.
回家后给老爸老妈旅馆打电话,说前两天传真了两次他们应该收到了,不过目前还没有北京大使馆的消息,那边等得急躁得很,说到底能不能提前,不能他们就先回去了,于是安慰他们说再打电话问问.
买卡给签证预约处打电话,开始是说中文的,又告诉我这种情况只能够传真去appeal or request an emergency appointment. 说如果他们看了同意了就可以提前预约时间,如果不同意就不会有任何回复.我问有没有其他方式联系他们,来确定他们收到了看了传真.他说没有.我说这不是太不透明了么,怎么complain,他说就只有传真给这个号码.这个不是自己监督自己的模式么? 我有些郁闷,就问他是中国人美国人,说是中国人,我想他也的确没有办法,就谢谢再见了.
过了一会,想会不会说英文的知道的多一些,就又打电话,结果都联上了,说排在第一位,突然说人走了,请下次再打(估计方便去了?),作罢.
查使馆网页,contact us, 给BeijingWebmaster@state.gov 发email, complain
lacking of communication and transparency. 虽然也知道发这个email估计不是地方,可是他们也的确没有提供一个可以沟通的方式.
一段时间以前(不记得多久了),当时刚开始要购买电话卡预约,我也complain过说网上写的不清楚,国内用什么电话,国外用什么电话,区号什么的很不intuitive. 当时也没有回我的信. 后来不知道什么时候,再看就清楚了很多.也许是许多人都complain了,或者他们自己有所改变.
好的制度都是慢慢摸索摩擦出来的,总有利益冲突.
我后来也回国了一次,没有见记我仇:).其实,就算不让我出来也没有什么,君子天行健.何况现在也有博士学位了.只是老爸老妈还是觉得能够办了绿卡再考虑回国比较好.
当然这次complain的东西, 也是不太可能在短期内可以改变的. 不过作了自己也觉得尽力了.当然信里我还是注意一些语气的,不希望有反效果. 末尾只是说,作为世界上号称最大的民主国家,这样的黑箱操作似乎不符合美国的形象.
发了信后,又接着打电话,因为爸妈说使馆他们下午就不上班了. 这回接通一个说英文的女的,不过听口音好像还是中国人(大概这样辛苦的接线员工作都是聘中国人吧),又说了一边,得到的也是类似答复. 不过,重要的一点是她宣称使馆会在一个礼拜之内答复,不管要求提前签证时间能不能得到批准. 这个和刚才说中文的男士的答复不一样,他是说如果不批准就没有任何回复. 另外,我说我在国外,他们回传真到国外吗,还是email.她说如果我给的联系方式里由国内的,可能会用国内的. 我虽然让老爸老妈配了手机,还专门办了漫游(外地来北京),可是还是希望他们能够联系我,比较两老年纪太大,手机使用也不熟. 希望能够在下周得到回复,否则让老人一直在北京住旅馆他们也难受,电话里向我抱怨好多次了.
anyway,老婆说可能得要去拜拜佛什么的,我想我就写点我们的经历,希望有点用,也算积
累RP求祝福的一种吧.

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3，爸妈签证过程：

约的是5月7日早上7点半，被分到黑人女签证官那里。一组7人，包括我爸妈，最后过了三个，就是说除我爸妈外过了一个，据了4个。有一个老先生比我爸年龄还大（我爸69），没过。一对湖北夫妇，去过4次，最近连据两次。这一组签证官看的比较仔细，所以签的慢，其他签证官可能已经签完3组了。
一开始她也不怎么看材料，我妈赶紧从文件夹里递上我的申诉信，议员的信，材料清单（上次签什么都没看），而且他们说跟别人学的是倒着递进去方便签证官看。问了很多问题，包括我的情况，还有问儿子以后怎么发展，我妈说我会根据情况来定。好像比较喜欢看我妈他们老年人跳舞的照片。我妈还指给她看她过60岁生日时候很多亲戚的照片。
最后有惊无险，还是通过了。

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4，

计划：觉得爸妈签证太辛苦了，不确定性因素也太多，想着能够改变一下制度，大致先写了一些建议准备提给大使馆以及议员（觉得美国的制度还是可以逐渐完善的，有相对及时的
反馈，国内要是也这样就好了），大家有其他建议的请提，完了再请人proofread一下。

The purpose of this letter is to suggest change of the current visa interview procedure for elderly parents visiting their sons/daughter.
First I would like to list the reasons that why the changes are necessary:

1.    Current visa application procedure is not efficient for both the applicants and the visa officers. The applicants spend a lot time and money to prepare their materials and come to the embassy, but very often their applications get rejected in a few minutes. The visa officers also have to check a lot of materials provided by the applicants and try to make sure everything is correct, the responsibility to prevent any illegal immigrants gives them a lot of pressure.
2.    Current visa application procedure is not fair.
a)    The law places the burden of proof on the applicant. Some elderly person are not good at xpressing their ideas clearly and directly, or sometimes their dialect is hard to understand, in these cases the visa officers can not get the information they wanted in a few minutes and this might have some negative influences to the application.
b)    There are no clear criteria for how to demonstrate the strong tie to their home country. Sometimes the visa officers may decide the case by just examining the DS-156 and DS-157 forms, and they do not even check other，documents the applicants prepared (since there is no burden to read the proof); other times we were told the visa officers couldn’t make decisions just based on the documents, they need to talk to the applicants and the applicants are expected to answer questions clearly and directly (unfair for  some people, see the above paragraph). Many people got confused and got
an impression that whether they can get the visa or not is just pure luck and depends on what mood the visa officer is in. Also, they felt the procedure is not transparent and one purpose of the rejection might be to collect more visa application fee. Second I would like to suggest some changes:

1.    The Department of State can apply some penalty to those who break their promise, i.e., some monetary fee if the parents stay longer than specified in DS-156, or some penalty to their sponsor. Usually the parents do not want to cause any trouble to their son/daughter so this should be very effective. This way, it also saves the visa officers time to carefully examine all the materials, and reduce their working pressures.
2.    Depending on the law system of the applicants’ home country, the Department of Sate can also seek collaboration with the local government,no only to verify the materials the applicants provided, also to make sure the applicant will return to the home country. In fact the China government has its own database to verify all the information the applicant provides and has been strict to the lawbreakers.
At last, I would suggest a statistics be conducted to verify what is the percentage that the parents visiting their children would not return to
their home country on time, and adjust the visa application procedure based on that statistics.

来源：未名空间（www.mitbbs.cn）