US REJECTS 9.7 PERCENT ISRAELI VISA APPLICATIONS IN 2013
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed concern at reports in the Israeli press that the Obama Administration is increasingly rejecting requests from Israeli citizens for visas to visit the United States.
The report was released in Israeli newspaper Haaretz Tuesday night, saying that the rise in visa rejections probably stems from U.S. reluctance to allow Israel entry into the Visa Waiver Program.
According to U.S. State Department records consulted by these reports, during 2013, 9.7% of Israelis who requested visas –– some 12,000 people –– were denied. This is a sharp rise on the figures for 2012, in which 5.4% of Israelis requesting visas had their applications rejected, itself a steep rise on the figure for just a few years ago, 2007, when only 2.5% of Israelis were rejected for visas. This is more than a three-fold rise in visa rejections in a mere seven years.
The U.S. has a ‘white list’ of countries whose citizens can come to the U.S. without a visa, but only countries with a visa rejection rate of less than 3% are put on this list. The recent growth in U.S. visa request rejections for Israelis forced Israel off that list.
This is more than a three-fold rise in visa rejections in a mere seven years, according to a report in zoa.org a Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) website quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).
The official said, “We have for years been waiting to drop below the 3 percent mark in order to obtain visa exemptions, but they keep raising the bar … In our view, this is being done artificially, with requests being denied for no good reason. In all other respects, we qualify for the program.”
Israel’s entry into the waiver program was included in a pair of broader U.S.-Israel bills last year that called for Israel to be granted a waiver if it, “has made every reasonable effort, without jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel, to ensure that reciprocal travel privileges are extended to all United States citizens” (‘More Israelis being denied U.S. tourist visas.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We are deeply concerned to learn that Israelis, in contrast to the situation in past years, are being rejected in record numbers to visit the United States for no apparent, justifiable reason. The absence of reasonable ground for these rejections leads only to the conclusion that the rejections are political in nature. In particular, as has already been suggested by Israeli officials, an effort has been made to prevent Israel from joining 37 favored nations whose citizens can travel to the U.S. for up to three months without visa.
The failure of the U.S. to exert any pressure on allies and the U.N. to prevent the Palestinian Authority (PA) winning non-member statehood last year, resulting in an overwhelming vote for the PA (contrary to the George H.W. Bush’s Administration’s derailing a similar initiative in the 1990s, when it threatened upfront to defund any UN agency that took this step);
The Obama Administration departing from past U.S. policy by seeking to have Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria condemned in the UN Security Council as ‘illegitimate’ (only vetoing when the Arab states insisted on a resolution calling these communities ‘illegal’). (T/P04/E01)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
