China as Panacea

In 1851, Horace Greeley famously said, "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country," and thereby helped inspire a generation of pioneers to settle the American frontier. Or maybe he didn't. In any case, it was sage advice, and is no less applicable today. I might just tweak it as "Go west until you hit 南京西路."

That is easier said than done, of course. Not everyone can seek their fortune abroad, but I can't quite laud the entrepreneurship of a school superintendent in rural Maine who is trying to cash in on the "China" craze as best he can.

Even at US$27,000 a year in tuition, there likely is sufficient demand among Chinese students and their parents. The real trick is how such students could ever secure a U.S. visa. The key criterion for tourist and student visas is whether the candidate presents a risk of overstay. Applicants for U.S. visas are presumed to be such a risk unless they show ties, e.g., family, assets, positions of power, that would compel their return to China. In short, the sort of ties a teen typically lacks.

The U.S. does, of course, issue some student visas to Chinese applicants, but the competition is fierce. When I was an English teacher in Shenyang, I was frequently asked by students to accompany them to the U.S. consulate and (literally) stand behind their visa requests. Only once did I agree to do so, but after waiting outside in line for an hour and inside a large waiting room for at least an hour more, I was ordered back to the waiting room when my student finally got her 30-second chance to argue her case (through a teller window) before a consular official. Her visa application was denied on the spot and she left in tears, with her scholarship to a Pennsylvanian college I had never heard of about to go to waste. I felt bad for her and would not have accompanied her had I not seen great potential in her. But while it was hard not to feel sympathy for the others rejected that day, the "ugly American" in me wanted to skewer those who displayed a smug sense of entitlement and cursed the United States as soon as things went badly for them. Hey, we're a nation of immigrants, but we can't let everyone in.

Years later in Beijing, I always enjoyed hearing stories from U.S. officials who worked in the visa section of the U.S. Embassy. By that time, many applicants were using Internet chat rooms to try and game the system. Each consular official was given a nickname (Blue Eyes, Fat Man, Blondie, and so on) and their apparent tendencies, likes, dislikes, favorite questions, etc., were much discussed. As with a line at a bank, teller selection was more or less random, so apart from showing up on a day when your "favorite" official was expected to work, there was probably no way to guarantee a face-to-face meeting. One official told me he was slightly offended when the first applicant he greeted after a shift change responded in horror with, "This is not Beautiful Man!"