Visa

I grew up abroad and used to take traveling for granted. From the day I was born, my family traveled several times a year. There were summer and winter vacations to exotic islands in the Far East, road trips in Europe, shopping sprees in Hong Kong and the annual trip back to Iraq to visit with family, getting acquainted with the fatherland, so to speak. I traveled so much that I got sick of it at one point and just wanted to settle down. My wish came true when my father retired and we moved back to Baghdad in 1993 -- finally, a place to call home.

The recent agreement between business and labor leaders on how to provide visas for nonagricultural workers in such industries as construction, hotels and restaurants is a surprising and welcome development. Such a breakthrough agreement would have been unthinkable a year ago, when the debate over comprehensive immigration reform was mired in anger and overheated preelection rhetoric. Fortunately, stubborn partisanship has given way to wary pragmatism. As a result, members of Congress and stakeholder groups have resumed negotiations, and deals like the one reached between the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the weekend are possible.

We learned the other day that the average allowance given to kids is now $15, according to the American Institute of CPAs. Now comes word that the Tooth Fairy is also pretty generous. Our friends at Visa say the average chunk of change left under the pillow for teeth-losing kids is now $3 per tooth . And that's apparently at the low end of Tooth Fairy largess. Some kids receive as much as $20 per tooth. The experts say Tooth Fairy inflation is not to be taken lightly. When kids compare notes on how much they scored, it can be hurtful to little feelings if it's discovered that the Tooth Fairy leaves bigger bucks to some than to others.

After filing 400 stories from China, reporter Melissa Chan never thought she'd wind up in the headlines herself. Chan returned to Southern California last week as the first accredited foreign correspondent to be expelled from China in 14 years, an act that sparked a flurry of news reports and expressions of solidarity from fellow journalists. Chan, who was the sole Al Jazeera English correspondent in China, said she knew she was on shaky ground for most of this year. She had been working on month-by-month credentials since January, when the government refused a routine visa-renewal request.

It was an unseasonably warm and bright afternoon in mid-autumn when Moody agreed, grudgingly, to Mahtob's request that we go to the park. As we reached the swings and slide at the far end of the park, Mahtob squealed at the sight of a little blond girl, perhaps 4 years old, dressed in shorts and a top and wearing Strawberry Shortcake tennis shoes identical to the ones Mahtob had brought with her from America.

Country: Australia Passport Required: Yes Visa Required: Yes Shots Required: No Notes: Visitor visa valid up to five years, multiple entries, stays of six months. Transit visas not required for stay up to 72 hours. Information: (213) 380-0980 Country: Austria Passport Required: Yes Visa Required: No Shots Required: No Notes: No visa required for stay up to three months.

What a difference a little piece of plastic makes. Life without a credit card, Susan Rumas discovered three years ago, meant one inconvenience after another. Without a credit card, she couldn't get past the cashier at her local drug store. "I used to get all my prescriptions there," the 41-year-old director of a police impound unit said, "and I had been dealing with them for 10 years. But they said if you don't have a credit card you can't cash a check.

Re "Is the border secure?," March 10 Supporters of building a nearly impenetrable fence along the U.S.-Mexico border say such a barrier would go a long way toward stopping illegal immigration. However, an estimated 40% of the illegal immigrants already in the United States (more than 4 million of the total) are visa abusers. These are people who came to the United States with a valid visa (tourist, student or others) and stayed past the expiration. Many of them don't look like Mexicans, and they blend into our society.