Halle Orchestra bails on US tour plan...
...citing the ridiculous difficulty in getting into this country.
New visa procedures have been introduced to protect the US against terrorists. Most visitors with machine-readable passports can still use the visa waiver scheme, but performers intending to work in the US cannot do this. They have to arrange an appointment at the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, via a phone line charged at £1.30 a minute, and then appear for an interview and fingerprinting. The fee is $100."It's not a level playing field," said Russell Jones, director of the Association of British Orchestras. "Journalists and sports people do not have to go through these hoops."
That's mind-blowing given that journalists in general tend to be less patriotic than the population at large (for good reason).
And our excuse?
John Caulfield, the US embassy's consul general in the UK, said statistics showed the new rules had not led to fewer performers going to the US. Since the start of 2004 all US visas had incorporated a print of the right and left index fingers. "We cannot go [to Manchester] because the equipment is linked into our computers and [goes] back on high-speed lines to Washington to check the biometric data against databases. We are all paying a cost because of terrorism."
I can't believe the spin on this. This is Britain after all, not some Turd World hellhole; surely a fingerprint reader could be attached to any computer hooked to a T1 line, to do the comparison. As for the disincentive, we don't know how many performers WOULD have gone to the US. And there have been a number of concerts in Cleveland cancelled at the last minute due to visa problems.
We used to have freedom to travel. People will some day drop their jaws in amazement when I tell them that I used to go to Canada to research high school papers, or to get from Detroit to Boston. I have not flown since 9/11, because I refuse to be treated like a criminal because I won't stay in my cage.
This is so like the USSR, or China, or Berlin. Those people who want to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out should be careful what they ask for; walls work both ways.
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