A Little More on the New Visa Requirement for US Visitors

Here are a few additional points and thoughts about the Bolivian government's announcement that it will now require US visitors to obtain visas before coming.

First, a source within the government told me that the visa applications will be handled in the US by the dozen Bolivian consulates, not just the embassy in DC. That spreads out the work a little more realistically, but it could still generate more than a thousand or so applications per office per year, a huge new workload for short-staffed operations. That source also points out that a good number of the people effected by the new law will, in fact, be Bolivians living in the US who have obtained US citizenship and no longer have a valid Bolivian passport.

Second, news reports here suggest that the new US ambassador to Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg, was caught totally by surprise by the government's announcement. If so, aside from what it says about how the Morales government chose to handle the issue, it also doesn’t say much for the connections the new ambassador has forged with Bolivian authorities. Are relations so strained that no one in the US Embassy had any source that would give the US advance word?

Third, as a diplomatic gesture, the Morales announcement was odd in its timing. Just last week, during a six-senator visit to La Paz, the new leader of the US Senate, Senator Henry Reid (D-Nevada) signaled a serious thawing in US/Bolivia relations. He called Evo Morales a "magnetic personality," adding that Evo, "could be, if things work out right, the best leader this country ever had." Then two days later the Morales government announced the new visa requirements. I don't know if that will have any effect on the presumed warm and fuzzy feelings that Reid was apparently ready to bring back to Washington on behalf of the Bolivian government.

PS: on Saturday

I was just at a child's birthday party with a couple of dozen Bolivian friends and asked people what they thought about the new visa requirement for US visitors. Most seemed pretty supportive. One had this comment, which I thought was pretty funny.

What's the fuss about? Americans already have Visas. Most of them have Mastercard too.