A Little Discretion, Please

The immigration issue is big news in the US these days. Illegal Mexican immigrants, working at Wal-mart, provide staple fodder for Jay Leno on the Tonight show. However, this article is not about immigration - illegal or otherwise. It is about ordinary folks from other countries wanting to visit America for a short visit. Should be fairly simple and straightforward, right? Well, maybe not.

Dr. Prakash Amte and his wife, Manda - also a PhD -are known as the Schweitzer couple of India. For years, they have been engaged in providing free medical care to over 40,000 extremely poor tribals in the hinterland of India. They also provide free education for hundreds of their children. In addition to this, they are engaged in the treatment and eradication of leprosy. They also run an orphanage for destitute children; and have been successful in training a good number of tribals, who are now gainfully employed as teachers, forest guards and police personnel.

The Amtes are definitely no millionaire philanthropists. In fact, they have virtually no wealth or regular income. They fund all their charitable activities by cajoling donations from trusts, industrialists and, often reluctant, political parties.

The Amte couple has been invited by an organization of Indian-American social workers to attend their annual convention in Seattle. So they dutifully went along to the US consulate in Mumbai - with all the required documentation - to apply for a short-stay visitor's visa. It was denied. Reason? Their income was too low for them to qualify. In officialese, 'people with weak financial and social status can be denied a US visa'. The operative word to remember is 'can' and not 'must'.