Visas

Re "Tourist trap," Opinion, Feb. 19 Eric Lucas' perspective on the United States' welcome to the world is outdated. The Department of State issued 6.4 million nonimmigrant visas in fiscal year 2007, 10.4% more than the year before. We issued more than 651,000 student and exchange visitor visas -- an all-time high. The Bureau of Consular Affairs has enhanced America's welcome by improving the transparency and efficiency of the visa process while maintaining its security. U.S. Embassy websites worldwide provide information in English and the local language.

Two local immigration attorneys were sentenced Monday for filing false employment visa applications for foreign nationals, including more than a dozen who worked at their San Fernando Valley law firm. Daniel E. Korenberg, 58, of Encino, a founder and senior partner at ASK Law Group in Sherman Oaks, was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison and three years' probation, including six months in home detention with electronic monitoring, authorities said.

Driven crazy by U.S. immigration policy, Microsoft Corp. executives decided to drive some of their employees north. Unable to land enough visas for a third of the foreign-born engineers and computer scientists it wanted to hire -- many of them newly minted graduates of U.S. universities -- the Redmond, Wash., company opened a software development center just over the Canadian border last year. About 150 people now work in Vancouver. "Our immigration system makes it very difficult for U.S.

Foreign visas: A headline on a Business section story Monday about the shortage of visas for foreign-born engineers and computer scientists said that U.S. firms were opening sites abroad to overcome the problem and that some planned multiple filings. Although some companies filed multiple applications for each potential candidate last year, U.S. officials closed that loophole this year, as the story indicated.

The operator of two English language schools was charged Wednesday with running a scheme that allowed foreign nationals, including several Russian prostitutes, to fraudulently obtain student visas to enter and stay in the United States. Bezhad "Ben" Zaman, 50, of Beverly Hills, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran, was arrested by federal agents without incident in what investigators believe is the largest student visa fraud scheme ever staged on the West Coast, authorities said.

State Department officials, who have been harshly criticized for moving too slowly in allowing Iraqi refugees into the U.S., issued new immigration figures Wednesday and suggested they may reach a goal of admitting 12,000 refugees this fiscal year. Government figures show that 2,627 Iraqis have been cleared to enter the country since Oct. 1. An additional 5,000 have been approved for entry within the next three months, and 8,000 more have been contacted for interviews.

The State Department has withdrawn Fulbright scholarships from eight Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip because Israel will not grant them exit visas, a spokesman said. The eight won the prestigious grants for education at U.S. universities and remain eligible, the spokesman said. Israel has sealed off Gaza to protect bordering Israeli towns and punish Hamas, which controls the strip. The decision to withdraw the scholarships was first reported by the New York Times.

June is normally one of the busiest months in this commercial hub, home to the largest wholesale market in the world. Traders from around the globe descend here to bargain with tens of thousands of merchants and place their year-end orders. But walk through the hotel lobbies, Middle Eastern restaurants and the city's big trading emporium, where some 30,000 stalls are jammed together, and it's clear that this isn't a typical year.

Singer Boy George, who had planned a U.S. tour this summer, has been denied a visa to enter the country, his managers say. The 47-year-old performer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, was turned down because he's awaiting trial in London, his representatives said. He has pleaded not guilty to imprisoning a man at his London home. The U.S. Department of State said visa records are confidential so it couldn't comment.

It was a farewell dinner, Chinese-style. A dozen people seated around a large table awkwardly picked up morsels of food from a revolving platter and sipped from tall bottles of room-temperature beer. There was a joyless quality to the evening as the dozen or so assembled guests, Britons, Canadians and Americans who had come to China to teach English, contemplated their imminent departure on account of visa restrictions.