U.S. and Hong Kong (2002)

State Department Briefing, July 25, 2002

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher briefed.

Following is the transcript:

(begin transcript)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
Richard Boucher, Spokesman
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)
THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2002
12:52 P.M. EST

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

QUESTION: Are there any changes in visa policy that you can tell us about, such as the cancellation -- the requirement of visa interviews in Saudi Arabia, has that been copied in other countries around the world? Tightening of visas?

MR. BOUCHER: I've talked repeatedly here about the many changes that have been made in visa processing since September 11. We're getting more information from applicants, we're doing more interviews around the world, we're getting more information ourselves, we're getting more information from other agencies that we can check against, we have sent a variety of different guidance to embassy officers so that consular officers can be the best equipped possible to make the judgments that they have to make in order to keep America safe. So there's a lot of things going on. I would say, it's hard to give a worldwide statistic because in many ways each of the posts makes these adjustments themselves based on the policy.

I know of a couple of posts that have stopped third-party acceptance. I know in Hong Kong, where I used to be, they're not using travel agents anymore. But travel agents there only provided, I think, seven percent of the intake on applications. So generally around the world, though, I would say that we are trying to do more directly; and we're certainly interviewing more and more applicants and getting more and more information from applicants as we consider their cases.

[ ...Intervening Text... ]

(The briefing was concluded at 1:45 p.m. EDT.)

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