(4 Dec 1997) T/I: 11:29:56


Hopes are high on street outside the US Consulate in Beijing where the fate of many rest in the hands of a few. This is the daily ordeal faced by hundreds of mainland Chinese eager to go to the United States.
Lines are long and forms are often in short supply for applicants who are ready to do whatever it takes to get a visa to the US.
Documents are hastily copied and glue is left to dry in last minute preparations which often end abruptly at the screening window of this small booth where judgement is swift, and in the eyes of many, unfair.
About 75 percent of these applicants will get what they've come for -- a non-immigrant visa. China's robust economy has created a new affluent middle class. Record numbers of its citizens can now afford to visit America and the visa section of the embassy is straining to handle this human wave of applicants.
Most of them are legitimate tourists, business people, students and family members, but other applications are determined to make their trip a one-way journey with fake letterhead and phony documents.

SHOWS:

BEIJING, CHINA 4/12
0.00 WS long lines of visa applicants outside US Consulate
0.04 MS crowds, PAN along lines
0.09 CU woman filling out application form on hood of parked car
0.12 WS waiting crowd inside building, PAN toward front
0.18 MS front of crowd, man walking to interview window, handing through application form
0.24 WS/PAN rear view of four interviewers talking to individual applicants
0.29 English NATSOT unidentified interviewer to applicant: "Do you speak any English? Speak some English for me. Try it, OK? Just try it. You're going to do business in America, right? (Man says "Yes") So I want to see if you can speak English, right?"
0.39 CU faces of Chinese visa applicants waiting in line
0.44 English NATSOT David Lyon, Minister-Counselor for Consular Affairs: "China falls somewhere in between sort of a moderate-fraud country and a high-fraud country. There's a lot of fraud in China right now. Then you have an awful lot of applicants."
0.54 CU visas being printed by machine
0.57 MCU CU consular worker pasting visas into passports
1.05 CU visa being pasted.
1.07 MS people outside, filling in visa application forms
1.12 WS policeman keeping crowd orderly

1.15 Vision ends

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