Day 167 - A Convention of Kwieks

Image of Weissenhofsiedlung, across the street from my
apartment in Stuttgart, by jaime silva, via Flickr.com

My assignment to Stuttgart was for 18 months. The first 12 months were in the Non-Immigrant Visa Section and the last six months were in the American Citizen Services Section. The stories from the Visa Section were much more interesting.

We consular officers didn't interview every visa applicant; we only interviewed the interesting ones. Most German citizens were able to apply by mail, sending their passports, applications, and photos to us. So long as they were well established in Germany, with good jobs and family, they were good bets for being legitimate non-immigrant visitors to the United States - tourists. The interesting ones were those who didn't have good jobs or family or who weren't well established or who wanted to travel for something other than a holiday. Those were the applicants we invited for personal interviews.

When people wanted to travel soon, they couldn't necessarily get their passports and applications to us and then get the visas stamped in the passport back to them in time. Those applicants would come to apply in person. Again, we only interviewed the interesting ones. Many of the walk-in applicants dropped off their applications in the morning and we just issued the visas to them so they could pick up their passports in the afternoon.

The interesting applicants fell into six groups:

• Non-Germans who were passing through Germany on their way to somewhere else,
• Non-Germans who lived in Germany,
• Recent German high school graduates who wanted to take a year off to travel before they started their university studies,
• Young German women with American GI boyfriends,
• Germans who planned to travel to the United States for a purpose other than tourism, and 
• Anyone whose name was a hit on the name-check application that we were required to run for every applicant to whom we planned to issue a visa.

In my first month in Stuttgart, I had my fair share of interesting applicants. One of those were members of the Kwiek family. One morning a number of members of this family came in to submit their visa applications. They lived in Germany, had done all of their lives, but they were not German citizens. They had Stateless Person Travel Documents, not Passports. Stateless Person Travel Documents were what those who had no other citizenship who lived in Germany were issued for the purpose of travel outside of Germany. Those who held Stateless Person Travel Documents did not necessarily have the right to live in Germany. It was a document issued so the person could leave Germany.

Image of gypsy caravan by Feggy Art, via Flickr.com

The Kwieks were gypsies. They came to apply for visas because, they explained, they needed to travel to the United States for a Convention of Kwieks. The king of the Kwieks had apparently recently died, so the family needed a new king. The Convention would be held when a majority of Kwieks adult men, a quorum, was able to convene in the same place in order to elect a new Kwiek king. The plan was for that Convention to be held in New York.

The Kwiek who represented the group most assertively kept telling us to contact the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt if we had questions about the convention. But we had some more basic reservations about the Kwiek's ties to Germany that needed to be resolved before we needed any convincing about the legitimacy of the reason for the visit.

I was not very experienced at this point. I knew all the different types of non-immigrant visas and what the requirements were for each. But I didn't have the experience or judgment to know that I could turn down the applicant on the basis of what was presented without asking for more. I had this notion that I had to know everything about the situation before I could decide whether to issue a visa or not. So instead of just denying the application on the basis of the Kwiek's lack of strong ties to Germany, I explained that I wasn't convinced. Later I learned that the specific phrase I used in German conveyed the meaning that I didn't understand rather than that I understood precisely and on the basis of what I understood I had to deny the application. So the Kwiek's thought they could come back the next week with more information.

The next time, they presented a statement from their bank which showed they had a very large amount of money in an account and they had plane tickets for their trip. I still wasn't convinced, so I think - if I recall correctly - I did deny the application a little more forcefully that time.

The next day another group of Kwieks arrived to apply. They also did not have German passports, but they had a slightly more acceptable set of travel documents. Their documents were Resident Travel Documents indicating that although they were not German citizens, they had the right to continue living in Germany. They arrived with letters from their bank showing large amounts of money in their accounts, their plane tickets, along with their Travel Documents, applications, and photos. And they gave the same explanation for their planned trip - to attend the Kwiek Convention in New York. By this time, we had received a message from the Immigration and Naturalization Service reminding us that gypsies as a group were not usually good prospects as non-immigrants. The message invited consular officers who believed an applicant who was identified as a gypsy was a good risk to contact INS before issuing visas. In addition, my boss had advised me not to put much confidence in a letter from a bank listing a large balance in an account as there was no guarantee that money had been there the day before the letter was prepared or would still be there the following day. She encouraged me to use my judgment, not papers presented with applications, to base my decisions on.

I denied the applications of the second group of Kwieks.

A day or two later, another group of applications were received, also indicating travel to New York as the plan. But this group didn't have Kwiek as the surname. This group were Romanoffs. And this group had regular German passports. This group didn't say they planned to travel to the Kwiek Convention, but there was still something about them that felt like Kwieks. Along with the passports, they presented a letter from the bank showing a large bank balance and their plane tickets. And this group was accompanied by the personal secretary to the head of the family. It felt as though the Kwieks were turning up the fire under the visa stew just a tiny bit at a time, trying to find the point at which a visa would be issued. The information that prevented me from considering the application all that seriously was that the head of the family described himself as a businessman, but he didn't have an address for his business. He did have a diamond-studded gold watch on his wrist to go along with his large bank balance, but I considered what my boss had told me and realized just because he was wearing the watch didn't mean it was his.

I denied the applications of the Romanoffs as well.

I don't know if the Kwieks ever got a quorum of Kwiek men together in New York or if they had to change the venue to a country with a larger number of male members. I did some research recently and learned that in the 2000 census, there were 161 people with Kwiek as their surname. In that same census, there were 3,292 people with Wenner as their surname. But I suspect the Kwieks who were attempting to gather a quorum to elect a new king in 1985 weren't well represented on any census records.

I don't know if there was any truth at all in the story the first group of Kwieks told. What was true is that some Kwieks succeeded at getting visas in Frankfurt with the story of the Kwiek Convention as the explanation. So the Kwieks elsewhere in Germany followed the same path.