Mr. Visa Officer

TRUTH IN THE DATA

According to the immigration forums, visa officers are unfeeling deciders of heaven and hell. Most believed that you needed a guide to pass our Kafkaesque tests. Our reality was a six-week crash course on complicated immigration law, a limited foreign language class, and a ticket to the edge of the world. Work starts the day after you land.

Almost by accident, I found myself running fraud prevention at a backwater consulate. With twelve months of experience and twenty thousand visa interviews, most considered me an "expert" in the scourge of human smuggling. Officially, we didn't have a fraud problem.

Our refusal rate was ten times the country average. In that first year, at least five thousand of my visa holders never came back from "vacation." I had to be doing something wrong.

Much to my surprise, my skip rate turned out to be routine. Consider that interviews were usually under three minutes each, and our quota is twenty an hour. Washington had a plan.

International students paid the steepest prices for tuition, and education is big business. We understood the game, even though they were fleecing thousands for profit. We, too, had student loans; however, officers follow orders.

Our department didn't care that "universities" were popping up in strip malls and accepting anyone with a pulse. The growing numbers of disappearing "visitors" found themselves with a new occupation, slavery. In their attempt to live a better life, they found themselves indebted to criminal organizations. The proof was hiding in the visa application data.

My enlightenment came in the form of a police report. A middle-aged woman, carrying one of our visas, was arrested for prostitution at a cruddy truck stop. Reading between the lines, I saw she was only trying to pay a hefty tuition bill for her daughter. I couldn't blame their victims for exploiting the system, dirt farming in a barren tundra makes for a hard life. This particular case told me where to look.

Mountains of data later, I found that every "coach" left a trail of breadcrumbs linking their victims. By examining the cases individually, we were like the blind men feeling an elephant. Each man touched a different part, but none sensed the elephant. For our applicants' sake, our perspective needed to grow substantially.

New knowledge allowed us to achieve zero overstays for our visitors and raise approval rates! Not bad for six weeks of training and prayer. Washington still grumbled that there was no fraud problem until DHS brought the largest of the fraud rings down.

By examining the facts and considering a person's humanity, our visitors had a real chance at the life they risked all to obtain. The knowledge of our success spread, informing others to fight smarter against trafficking. Ending slavery in the modern age is only the beginning. The truth will set us free, even if it hurts.