From across the Bay View Hotel, watching ant trail of crowding people in the United States Embassy give a start –up, pounding my heart to skip beats. I am among them, a dreamer of a tourist visa.

Being an applicant is overcoming fear when two months earlier the call center requested a portfolio how to present and sell my idea to the consul.

The short notice for tedious paper work was mind boggling and my innocence of what will happen had given me total discomfort.

The awaited time finally comes, a day of judgment as I mumble silent prayers hoping my diarrhea will not take another five toilet emergency. Even wearing this suit in a steamy atmosphere outside these walls is feverish. But my family insists a facial restoration for maturity is necessary. It’s a funny thing to narrate your one hell day in the US embassy.

Being a neophyte is frightening, listening gossips in the adjacent room. Narration of guard escorting applicant for refusing to accept rejection, fainting ladies unchanging consuls’ decisions, even to a point of telling you everything inside is wired and your movements are part of approval process. Whatever is true, these stories I listen make me ill.

I obediently follow the procedure from sticker labeling until reaching the pre-screening windows A and B. Handing the application form and passport to the counter, as the lady segregates other documents into groups. It’s like being in the wet market choosing which cluster of fish are better looking, hoping a high probability my application will be in good faith.

And so I try dusting my fears off inside the confession room, while my seatmates are so preoccupied looking those flashing numbers. Counting time when their turn will come. Their monosyllabic answers signal silence, making me an eaves dropper.

I listen, interestingly stare applicants, declaiming their spiel, are they telling the truth?

That creepy look one consul gives, sends chills to a seventy year old man who reveals a deck of land titles. Only to hear, “Denied” and the old man almost in tears asks, “What do you need?”

“Sorry you are not qualified for a visa.”

This one-shot denial has a domino effect. Regardless of profession; managers to children receive a headshake of refusal from their interrogators. Handing back their passports, applicants walking slouch.

If there are set of rules, why certain goods cannot pass international standards for trading, my query: what qualifications are needed for visa grant? Having plenty of money will require a history of acquiring wealth while having a passbook with a religious saving still both may receive a denial stamp.

Consuls are the principle rulers of non-immigrant section, scrutinizing worthy travelers. Why are they so prejudiced, we paying crimes of those who did not return home? Their decisions are final and irreversible. Perhaps in our failure to meet their expectations, we have made their listening skills strain from the same discourse, making them memorize those old lines.

Among us, applicants have enumerated their denial more than once, still unable to pick the reason. This time, a lady trying to convince the officer to approve her application, explaining she is ashamed from her superior for asking certification for the fourth time. But the consul finds her rational ground lame, her fate of a rejected applicant happens again.

Some consuls will not even glance at the documents you have been preparing. They study your face and they immediately can foretell your fortune. Did they get a special training for that? And that buzz, never go into the hands of the Korean consul or to a Filipino officer, a hundred percent you will fail.

Though there is an exception right after 911, the consulate was lenient, giving quite a number of applicants with a five year to a ten year multiple travel-visas. There was a phobia of traveling to the United States, so all the consuls were generous.

But after the short lived thanksgiving, they are back to the same pattern. I knew of someone who got a medical sponsorship for bone marrow transplant but her application visa denied. My cousin working with Foreign Affairs accompanied her again and got an entry permit. But the disease had taken her completely before she could fly.

There are no favors either whether you are a politician or even in religious group. Our university preacher was also refused to visit his dying son in New York to give last rites. So my chance of getting a B1-B2 visa is slim, upon learning—maybe they set a quota of five per day or even less.

Still waiting for my turn, I become exhausted and hungry. A new comer in his early forty’s sits, sensing my restlessness, he tells me to stay calm.

He assures, “You’ll get one by day end”.

 “It’s a psyche war process.” He tips off.

He has an expiring five year multiple and shows a deal of confidence for its renewal.

Coaching me the ultimate secret of passing through the consul’s heart,” humility, wits and pretending not too interested.”

As electronic counter beeps my turn, I face my consul. Visiting the land of the free has a corresponding value: apprehension of being rejected including my worry (spending for airfare, hotel accommodation and the $100 fee).

It’s no joke to schedule for an interview for provincial applicants, which I believe the consuls may have taken for granted. Yet travelers have missed the idea too that flying to the U.S. for a mere vacation is more expensive, unless you have an agenda to do. That these officers have their own reasons, one must have justification of coming back. Being tight enough to limit the entry for visiting and I have completely understood what the stranger is trying to say. I have achieved my goal; I earn the trust of the consul.

I search for my stranger to thank him, but he is in a far end window taking his call. His identity has remained unknown. At that moment I think of him as a messenger who may have listened to my spiritual petition.

For those who wish to get yellow slips, take the tipster’s words as thoughts of wisdom.

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