Day 170 - It Isn't Personal, It's Just Business

Image of office by Ben Ramsey, via Flickr.com

Iranian businessmen who applied for visas to travel to the U.S. to develop their businesses had a very difficult job convincing consular officers in Germany that they were being truthful. It isn't that lying is grounds for refusal of a visa application, but certain lies make it impossible to assess a case.

Like for those applying to study in the United States, I had trouble understanding why Iranian businessmen or businesswomen would choose to establish a trading relationship with a business in the United States. Until October 1987, the trade embargo prohibiting trade between the U.S. and Iran was limited to weapons and aircraft, but given the troubled relationship between our two countries, the long-term prospects for vibrant trade relationships were very dim.

Most of these applicants brought invitations from their U.S. contacts inviting them to come to the U.S. for further discussions. Some of these letters looked like they could be legitimate. They were on letterhead paper, were prepared on word processors or at least on electric typewriters. And the invitations appeared genuine. It was the intent behind the letters that was still suspicious.

The invitations were never from big, well-known companies. They were always from small companies and we suspected they were all businesses set up by Iranian friends or family members of the applicants. Most of them were signed by Iranian sounding names. I don't think I ever found one of these cases convincing, so I am sure that I denied them all. And yet more like them kept on coming in.

One of the things about issuing or refusing visas is that it is impossible to know if the decision was the right one. Someone who is issued a visa walks away happy - whether that person should have been issued one or not. And someone who is refused a visa walks away unhappy - again whether the refusal was right or wrong. But someone who is refused a visa often refuses to accept the decision and continues to stand at the interview window, trying to reopen the case instead of walking away. Iranian applicants, especially those who claimed they were traveling for business, were the most difficult to convince there was no point in continuing the discussion. Sometimes the only way we could get them to walk away from the window was to do that on our side first - walk away to make it clear there would be no further discussion.

I learned a better way to refuse a visa to an Iranian businessperson when Shireen (not her real name - I wouldn't be able to remember the real name of a visa applicant if my life depended on it) presented her application and the usual affidavits about her ties to Iran and her wealth, as well as her invitation from a New York company for her to come to discuss a business venture.

This letter was the worst example of an invitation I had ever seen. It may have been on letterhead, but that was about the only business-like aspect of it. The letter was typed on a manual typewriter, with all the misalignments of capital letters that are typical of manual typewriters. The letter had lots of typos, misspellings, wrong word choices, and incorrect grammar. But the error that caught my eye that made keeping my composure at the window a challenge was in the signature block. The name was a Hispanic-sounding name, a curiosity since most such letters didn't try to hide the Iranian behind the invitation. But the title of the Hispanic-sounding name, typed under the name was "Wise President." I looked at it and looked at it, trying to figure out just what a Wise President is until I said it aloud. And then I understood. Farsi has a "V" sound, but no "W". The two English letters were often confused since anytime an English word started with a "W", it was usually replaced with a "V". Whoever had typed the letter had just reversed the subsitution and then corrected the spelling of Wice to Wise.

I asked the applicant to take a seat while I did some research. I had to walk away from the window in order to keep myself from laughing. When I got myself together, I called her back and told her that I was very sorry, but I could not issue a visa to her because I couldn't take the invitation she had presented seriously. I pointed out to her that the letter had so many errors in it, I couldn't believe that it was from an actual business. And the response from the applicant stunned me.

She looked at me straight in the eye and thanked me for letting her know that the business didn't appear to be reputable. She thanked me for saving her the time and money she would have spent pursuing the trip. And at that point, she turned around and walked away.

The light bulb went on. Iran is a shame-based society, not a guilt-based society. All I had to do to get Iranian applicants to accept my refusal was to give them an explanation that allowed them to save face. Life at the interview window got a little easier after that day.