Negros solon fumes as US cancels his tourist visa

The United States Embassy in Manila has canceled the 10-year tourist visa of Rep. Jose Apolinario Lozada (Lakas, Negros Occidental), chairman of the House foreign relations committee, and he’s fuming about it.

"The cancellation is an affront to a member of Congress. The embassy should apologize to me and the people I represent," Lozada told reporters yesterday.

Through the embassy’s "drop box" system, the congressman had applied for a transfer of his 10-year, multiple entry visa from his old, expired passport to a new one.

But instead of transferring the visa that was issued on April 11, 1995 and valid until April 10, 2005, embassy personnel tore it off and marked the space where it was detached "Canceled" in bold letters.

He was asked to apply for a new visa and to submit the necessary documents required of visa applicants.

These included a proof of bank accounts, a certificate of employment, recent pay slips, copies of land titles, and recent credit car billing statements.

"They are requiring me to submit these documents? This is insulting. They are showing no trust on an official of their host country," complained Lozada, who was a diplomat for 21 years before running for congressman.

He said in his years in the diplomatic service, it was a normal practice for diplomats to extend some courtesy to officials of their host countries.

He said he could not understand why the embassy had to cancel his visa, since he has been in and out of the US since he was 14 or 15 years old.

The last time he was there using his tourist visa was on Sept. 24, nearly two weeks after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. He stayed in the US until Oct. 4.

Lozada said he visited Ground Zero and was reporting to a radio station in Manila the frantic rescue and clearing jobs being done by the Americans when two New York City policemen approached him and inquired what he was doing.

When he told them that he was making some reports and showed them his driver’s license, they let him go without any further questions, he said.

He said this could not have been the incident that prompted the embassy to deprive him of his precious tourist visa.

The Lakas congressman said he intends to write the embassy to protest what it did to him and what it could do to other Filipinos similarly situated.

"If they can do this to a congressman, what more to ordinary Filipinos?" he asked.

Lozada’s case is reminiscent of the recent cancellation of the 10-year visas of two Filipino pilots suspected of carrying the deadly anthrax virus.

The pilots were to attend a flight refresher training and then fly to Nigeria where they had been hired. They were detained in Seattle, Washington and sent back to Manila even after US agents found no evidence of anthrax on them.