I was rejected the US visa for the first time when I was fifteen. I remember standing there, in front of the Embassy Consulate, unsure as to why I was being shut away, as just a young boy, from spending a summer abroad with his family. I was told I didnt have an extended enough travel history, because as you know most 15 year olds have probably been around the world.
Ten years later, after months of back and forth with the Embassy and papers flowing in and out, I was finally given a visitors visa for 5 years on my third try, routine for Lebanese citizens who were granted the document as far as I know. A few months later, I visited the United States of America for the first time ever.
On my second visit, the border control officer said his system couldnt process me, so I was taken into another room where, an hour and another interrogation later, I was permitted entry to come into the US to do my medical residency interviews. This happened again on my third entry, with longer waiting times. Entering the US has been the most invasive thing to my being, and Ive survived medical school.
Its also what has been happening to many of my colleagues and friends: doctors, scientists, researchers, humans. Just because they were unfortunate enough to be born in countries that are not worthy of enough of having their citizens treated with the minimum of human decency. I can tell you stories about physicians who were kept in those rooms for four hours, waiting for who knows what. Its never easy to sit there and not know whats going to happen to you, just because you dared seek entry of a foreign country that youve already been thoroughly vetted to be given a visa to.
This process that we go through every time we want to come here, that we know we have to willingly subject ourselves to in order for us to visit New York or some monument or even see some extended family is, apparently, not rigorous enough.
