Pakistani-Americans Await Changes to India’s Discriminatory Visa Rules

New York-based Indo-Pak couple Ibrahim and Pramilla Malick: People connect in a heartwarming way but both countries try their best to keep us apart.

My report for IPS published on Feb 16, 2012; it’s not on the website anymore due to technical changes so I’m posting the unedited piece below:

Pakistani-Americans await changes to India’s discriminatory visa rules

By Beena Sarwar

BOSTON: India and Pakistan have agreed to ease visa restrictions on each other’s citizens – but until that actually happens, American citizens with dual Pakistani nationality will continue to face what they allege is discrimination by the Indian visa authorities.

US visa weirdness

Visa delayed was visa (virtually) denied, in the case of Dr Umar Saif, who missed the conference at MIT where he was being honoured as a TR35 winner

Not that other countries don’t have increasingly stringent visa laws, but as Jason Pontin said “I’m not looking to those countries for standards and openness but to the US”. The quote ended up not being used in the final version of the report I did for the new web publication Latitude News, Visa void perplexes Pakistanis, which could have been titled ‘Visa delayed is visa (virtually) denied’, which is the case when you can’t make it to a meeting or a conference because of the delay, as in the case of Dr Umar Saif… Of course, there are security concerns, and things are getting better, thanks to the efforts of many organisations working with the State Department, but the uncertainty continues. Read more