New Visa Requirements Take Effect for U.S. Visitors to Bolivia

Readers:

Despite the recent news of political upheaval in Bolivia, the fact remains that hundreds of U.S. citizens will keep coming to Bolivia each month and, effective last weekend, getting in has gotten a good deal more complicated. Bolivia’s new visa requirements for visitors from the U.S. took effect December 1. The Democracy Center has received a lot of recent email asking us for information, so as a courtesy to our readers our assistant director, Melissa Draper, has prepared the post below with details on the new rules.

This post isn’t about the politics of the new visa requirements. For readers interested in that, I would refer you to one of our previous writings below. If you do look at any of these, please take note that the visa details discussed on this new post are the ones you should pay attention to (in other words, no, you won’t actually have to buy an ‘Evo sweater at the border.)

Bolivia to Require US Visitors to Get Visas (January 4, 2007)

Bolivian Government Announces New Visa Rules for US Visitors (April 1, 2007)

New Visa Requirements for U.S. Visitors to Bolivia Take Effect December 1st (September 11, 2007)

Lastly, if you want to know my personal opinion about the wisdom of Bolivia’s new visa rule, suffice it to say I really wanted to use the graphic here to accompany this post, but didn’t.

Jim Shultz


NEW VISA REQUIREMENTS TAKE EFFECT FOR U.S. VISITORS TO BOLIVIA

The U.S. now ranks in the category of most regulated in terms of immigration requirements for the Bolivia Foreign Ministry. While they stuck to their word on the start date, the government unfortunately did not release the details of requirements until mid November, sending many into a tizzy considering the holidays were just around the corner. Here are the basics:

Who Needs a Visa

There are thousands of Bolivians who have family members currently living in the U.S. and with U.S. citizenship who want to come back to Bolivia to visit their families. The government has gotten around this neatly, by clarifying that Bolivians with U.S. citizenship, or U.S. citizens who can show they are the children of Bolivians via a birth certificate or other documentation, can pass freely without a visa. However, if you are a U.S. citizen without such a Bolivian bloodline or connection, you do now need a visa to enter Bolivia.

Where can you get a Visa

Officially, and fortunately, you have two options. You can either apply for a visa from one of the Bolivian Consulates in the U.S., or you can get one upon arriving at the airport in La Paz or Santa Cruz, if you have all the documentation required. The Bolivian Embassy in the US has posted a list of all the specific requirements and other information here.

What Do You Need to Get a Visa

Here is the official list, according to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington:

** A completed two-page form
** A passport with at least six months left before its expiration
** A copy of credit card or bank statement (to show fiscal solvency)
** A yellow fever vaccine certificate
** A roundtrip itinerary in and out of Bolivia
** An invitation from a Bolivian or proof of a hotel reservation
** $100 in cash

What has not been confirmed is whether, in practice, you can do the on-site visa process if you arrive in Bolivia by land.

What the New Tourist Visa gets You

The new visa is good for five years, during which you can enter multiple times, for stints lasting a maximum of 30 days each. You cannot exceed a total of 90 days per calendar year and you cannot come and go more than three times in one calendar year. Unlike in the past, it appears that only in rare cases will visitors be allowed to stay legally over 90 days in any given year. However, informally, the Director of Immigration in Cochabamba has told The Democracy Center that the government will maintain its policy of charging those who overstay their visa a 10 Boliviano-a-day penalty (roughly $1.30 a day).

A few fears have been allayed, mainly on the logistics end. By allowing visitors to get the visa upon arrival, the bureaucratic mess is somewhat averted, and the visa becomes more of a tax on Americans than anything else. The requirements are not as “over the top” as predicted earlier (originally U.S. citizens were going to be required to produce a police certificate confirming that they had no criminal records).

Here’s a tip regarding the yellow fever vaccination requirement: If you have not had the vaccination, consider holding off on getting it (in the U.S. the shot typically costs $120). For the visa requirements, you have an option to sign an affidavit saying you have chosen not to take the vaccination and promise not to take legal action against Bolivia if you get the disease. The shot is really needless here unless you are traveling into some of the deeper jungle regions of Bolivia and you can get it here, if needed, for under $10.

If You Want to Stay Longer than 90 days in a Given Year

You can consider seeking a one-year temporary visa. The requirements for this are a bit different, namely you must have a Bolivian institution—educational or a work place—that formally invites you to the country and vouches for your status as a student or worker. It’s more expensive than the tourist visa, but gives you the flexibility to come and go as you please within a one-year period. According to documents we got from the immigration office here, the first step-- to get a visa de objeto determinado (specific purpose)-- costs just over $100. This visa gives you 30-days to fulfill the requirements for the one-year visa (Interpol check, police report saying that you are not a criminal and a blood test to prove your healthy, among a few other things), which costs another $134.

The days of fast entry into Bolivia for U.S. citizens may be gone, but the chance to visit Bolivia is not. We do ask any readers who have first-hand experience with entry by land or air since December 1 to let us know how the process went. Those experiences can be posted as a comment to this Blog. That way we can help keep students, teachers, backpackers, academics, friends, parents and businesspeople and others informed about their next trip to this amazing country, Bolivia.

Written by Melissa Draper

New Visa Requirements for U.S. Visitors to Bolivia Take Effect December 1st

On December 1st it is going to get a whole lot more complicated for visitors from the U.S. to get into Bolivia, but how much more complicated remains unclear. Today in La Paz, Bolivia's Foreign Minister laid out the specifics of the long-awaited new entry rules first announced on New Years.

Up until now entry to Bolivia from the U.S. has worked like this. You get off the plane in the bone-numbing cold of dawn in La Paz, adjust to trying to stand at an elevation equivalent to Mt. Whitney, then pass through a swift moving immigration line. There an officer opens your blue passport and gives you a free 90-day tourist stamp and waves you on. To leave costs you $45, but that's another story.

In January, in the name of "reciprocity" (i.e. it sure isn’t that easy for Bolivians to get on the plane going the other way) the Bolivian government announced that it would begin requiring visitors from the U.S. to obtain visas. In the eight months since, anxious tourists-to-be have waited for details to emerge.

In an official announcement, Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca explained:

Citizens of the U.S. that come to the country as tourists now can no longer step on Bolivian soil without a visa, after December 1. We have completed a bi-ministerial resolution that governs the requirements for the entry of foreigners. This deals with citizens of the U.S. and protects tourism.

According to Bolivian news reports, Bolivia will classify the U.S. as a "Category 3" country, subjecting it to the most stringent visa standards of any nation in the world. On paper, for now, those requirements include:

- Filling out a form with your basic personal information
- Providing a 4x4 cm color photograph with a red background
- Presenting a passport good for at least six more months
- Presenting some form of formal police document stating that you aren’t a criminal
- Providing either proof of a hotel reservation for your entire stay or a notarized letter of invitation from someone in Bolivia who promises to pay your costs of being here
- Presenting your round trip airline ticket
- Providing documents demonstrating your financial solvency in the U.S.
- Providing proof of a yellow fever shot

The new visa will also cost $134, which is actually $20 more than the cost of a visa for Bolivians to the U.S. Bolivians, however, pay the fee just for applying, even if their request is denied. "What for us is expensive, for them is economical," added the Foreign Minister.

Obviously this represents a substantial ramping up of the bureaucracy involved in making a visit to Bolivia. But still unclear is the question of whether visitors can do all this here on arrival or must do so beforehand with one of the handful of Bolivian consulates in the U.S. Choquehuanca told a La Paz news conference that the new visa could be obtained directly at the point of entry, be it an airport or a bus station, after previously completing the requirements. But, so far, no official has made it clear whether that means the paperwork all gets done beforehand in the U.S. or not.

One reason for this is probably that Bolivian consulates in the U.S. have already told the government that they are unprepared for the avalanche of paperwork headed their way if the processing happens in their U.S. offices.

There are several possible scenarios here.

1. Tens of thousands of U.S. visitors per year will now swamp Bolivian consulates (those who decide to still come) with visa requests. The result will be a really big mess.

2. Tens of thousands of U.S. visitors per year will now have to complete a complicated visa screening process on arrival at the airport or bus station. The result will be a really big mess.

3. The whole thing will evolve into something much less strict than it looks right now on paper. The result will be that getting into Bolivia will now cost $134 and be more of a hassle.

I can certainly understand, from an emotional standpoint, why many Bolivians, including the leaders of the current government, would want to adopt such a policy. The U.S. makes it very, very difficult to make the trip north, while the road south is cheap and open to all comers. That said, let’s just be clear about the practical implications if the visa rules are implemented in full:

** Thousands of young backpackers, having wrapped up their visit to Machu Picchu will not say to each other, “Hey, Bolivia sounds really cool, let’s go check it out.” They will not cross the border. They will not spend money in Bolivian hotels and restaurants. They will not buy wool sweaters. They will not increase employment and opportunity through tourism. They will not learn something about the country and take that experience and enthusiasm home.

** Hundreds of parents of Peace Corps volunteers, semester abroad students, and other young people here from the U.S. will not decide to take their family’s summer vacation in Cochabamba. They will not buy Aeorsur tickets. They will not book hotel rooms. They will not buy tours to visit the Chapare. They will not tell their friends in the U.S. that they saw first hand what a great country Bolivia is and what a great place it is to travel.

** Hundreds of independent journalists and filmmakers who are interested in what is going on here and who want to spend a few weeks here to help educate audiences abroad will not come here. They will not deepen U.S. understanding of Bolivia.

** Hundreds of young people from the U.S. will not come here to be volunteers in orphanages, hospitals and schools. They will not bring their creativity and goodwill. They will not write to their friends and neighbors to send money to help buy books, medicines, and diapers.

The irony of course, is that the people in the U.S. who are hell bent on making it so difficult for Bolivians to go there are not the people with any interest in visiting here. The people Bolivia will end up losing as visitors are the ones who would end up being some of the country’s biggest U.S. boosters.

I am not a Bolivian. I am a guest in this country, albeit one with a (more appreciated than ever) residency visa. If Bolivians place such a high value on the dignity sought by making it very complicated for people from the U.S. to get into their country, that is Bolivia’s sovereign right to decide. But let’s not pretend it is a policy without real implications for tourism and understanding.

A Note to our Regular Readers: Some readers will recall that we posted an April Fool's Blog on this topic, which some people believed, despite the clear disclaimer at the bottom. Personally, I was disappointed to see that the Bolivian government did not take up my suggestion to include in the price of the visa a new Evo Sweater. So much for all those conspiracy theories about my influence over the Bolivian government. I did hear, however, that our doctored photo of Ambassador Goldberg in an Evo sweater was very popular among U.S. Embassy staff.

In any event, today is 9/11, not April 1, so this post is actual fact based on Bolivian news reports. Just in case you wondered.

Getting a Visa from the U.S. Embassy: The View from Inside

Last week in La Paz I spent some interesting time visiting with two staff members at the U.S. Embassy, pleasant and dedicated public servants both, and readers of this Blog. It turns out that The Democracy Center's Blog has a following among some Embassy staff. Our April Fools edition this year, which included a lovely doctored photograph of Ambassador Goldberg in an Evo sweater, was evidently a special hit. So, to our readers at the Embassy, I say a special hello.

Among the topics we talked about during our La Paz visit is the way in which the U.S. Embassy deals with requests for visas by Bolivians seeking to visit the U.S. Readers may recall that I was critical of this process in a Blog that I wrote last January and my lunch partners from the Embassy wanted to clarify a few things, which I am happy to do in this edition of the Blog.

In January I wrote:

If you look in the American Heritage Dictionary (New College Edition, 2005) under the term royal pain in the ass, for definition number three you will find the words: Noun. The experience a Bolivian goes through to seek a tourist entry visa to the United States.

In fact, Embassy officials seem to be making an effort to make it less of a "pain in the ass" for would-be visitors. Here's a look at some of the issues involved:

The Forms

There is good news here. Under the old rules applicants had to deal with forms that were all in English and therefore wickedly confusing to many people applying. I know this first hand. When I was in the Embassy interview room last year (working on getting my four-year-old a blue passport) my wife and I were approached for help by people baffled by forms in a language they didn’t speak. By comparison, Bolivia's forms for arriving visitors have been in both Spanish and English for the 15 years I have been filling them out.

Now Bolivian applicants cannot only find the forms they need in Spanish but they can fill them out over the Internet in a snazzy new on-line "fill-in" form. One of the questions asked on the form is if the applicant has ever entered the U.S. with the intent of committing an act of terrorism, or if he or she is a member of a terrorist group, or had engaged in any act of genocide. A tip here from me for those applying – I am pretty sure U.S. officials are looking for a 'No' on that one.

The Cost

Here the news is not so good. I reported in January that it cost $110 to apply for a U.S. visa, non-refundable if you get denied. Since then the price has been raised to $114, non-refundable. Of that, $14 goes to DHL for processing the request and $100 to Uncle Sam. That is still about twice the monthly minimum wage here and a source of frustration for many applicants. The folks from the Embassy explained that the charge is this same amount for applicants from every country, under rules requires that require U.S. consulates to pay for themselves through such fees (and those charged for services to U.S. citizens as well). At 100 visits a day right now, even if some are families applying under one application, that still likely produces some tens of thousands of dollars every week for the Embassy. In Bolivia, that has to cover a good deal more than salaries and overhead. It seems to me that the U.S. could afford to refund a chunk of that back to the people who get denied, a decision that would have to come from Washington.

The Wait for a Visa Interview

Every Bolivian (14 or older) seeking a visa to visit the U.S. must travel to La Paz to be interviewed in person. And on the issue of how long it takes to get an interview my version was old news. In January I wrote that the wait for a visa interview was "usually months" after forms were filed. The Embassy says that the wait time is down to three weeks. That's not bad at all, considering that the Embassy is currently interviewing, as noted earlier, about 100 applicants each day, five days a week (a number that the Embassy staff noted was higher than usual due to seasonal tourism).

The Stack of Supporting Documents

I also wrote in January that applicants were expected to bring other paperwork to be reviewed by U.S. officials, including, "all kinds of personal economic information, such as bank statements, employment letters, etc." This, the Embassy says, is one of the great myths they'd like to dispel. The only things that Bolivian applicants are legally required to submit are: the completed form; a valid Bolivian passport; visa-size headshots; and proof that they paid the $114 fee. All the other forms are suggested by the Embassy as "supporting documents" but are not required. In fact, I was told, sometimes it is these very documents that get people in trouble. In their desire to show economic stability at home, a good number of applicants cook up fake employment letters and bank statements. Falsified documents, it seems, are almost as sure a route to denial as, "Oh yes, I want to go and blow up Disneyland."

The Statistics on Getting Accepted or Denied

On this topic, according to the official U.S. statistics, my January post was off by a lot. I wrote that applicants "stand a good 9 out of 10 chance of being denied". Not so, says the Embassy. According to a report they passed along for refusal rates for tourist and business travelers, more than two out of every three Bolivian applicants gets a U.S. visa. Now that will be news to the University of San Simon accountant who owns my house who applied to go see his cousins, and to Juan Patricio, the brother of a victim in the October 2003 massacres who was invited by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others to speak in Washington last year. They both got denied. Nevertheless, according to the official data, a lot more people walk out the door of the U.S. Embassy in La Paz smiling than crying. This does not account, however, for who gets in and who doesn't, a separate issue.

The numbers on visa refusals around the world are themselves interesting. If you want a tourist or business visa to the U.S. the best countries to come from are Luxembourg, France, and the Vatican, all of whom registered refusal rates of less than 2%. Membership in the "coalition of the willing" apparently has nothing to do with it. The three countries you most don't want to be from are Cuba, the Gambia and Ghana, all of whom had refusal rates above 61%. The Federated States of Micronesia, with a population of 110,000 people, scored a remarkable 100% denial rate, however. But that might be based on one guy who wanted to get a glimpse of Mt. Rushmore and misread the terrorist question.

What does it Really Take to Get In?

The most interesting part of my chat with the two people from the Embassy was when they shared their thoughts about what U.S. officials are looking for when they interview visa applicants from Bolivia. The top priority – not surprising from a nation in a political frenzy at the moment over immigration and border security – is finding and rejecting applicants who aim to be "tourists" for years.

The Embassy's questions, while they may take different forms in each case, are really these:

Why do you want to go to the U.S.?
What do you want to do there?
Why do you want to return to Bolivia?

The most certain rule about answering these questions, I was told, is: Lying guarantees you won't get a visa. Here was the advice the Embassy has to offer applicants:

1. Tell the truth, even if you are visiting family who got into the U.S. illegally. It was enlightening to hear a U.S. official explain that the Embassy staff knows quite well that a lot of people who want to go north are visiting people who sidestepped the visit to the Embassy on their way there. Many of those seeking a visa are headed to Arlington, Virginia or some other enclave of Bolivians to meet their grandchildren for the first time. According to the fellow in charge of making the decision to accept or reject, visiting someone who got in illegally is actually a perfectly good reason to ask for a visa.

2. Be clear about what you want to do in the U.S. Again, according to those who do the interviewing, if a guy from Punata shows up and says he is wants to visit Disneyworld for three weeks, he's got a hard sell on his hands. So does a widow who says she wants to see "the beautiful places" but can't name them. From the sound of it, a nicely printed itinerary that makes sense (week one, visit Uncle Jorge in Providence…) might be of more value than a bank statement.

3. Explain with clarity and enthusiasm why you are coming back. My favorite answer to this question was the one offered by a friend of mine seeking a visa to participate in an academic conference. In his interview he declared, "I don't like the United States at all. Why would I want to stay there?" Embassy staff want to hear about the job you have to come back for, the grandkids you can't live away from, and about the ties that bind you to Bolivia.

In the end the visa process is really about U.S. officials forcing you to prove that you aren't trying to add "undocumented immigrant" to your biography. While many applicants think that money in the bank is a big selling point (and I am still willing to bet good money that wealthier people get visas more readily than poorer ones), the word from the Embassy is, "not necessarily." Apparently there was a small flood of tourist visa applications from affluent Santa Cruz families after Evo's election in 2005, many of who looked like they were more likely to be headed to see realtors than relatives. A good number of them got denied.

A Suggestion

While the people running the Visa program at the Embassy seem like good people and clearly have a rough job – "every day I make someone cry" – the process still remains an expensive and daunting one to most Bolivians. It also remains a good deal more costly and daunting than the one in place for people from the U.S. visiting Bolivia.

That was clearly one of the reasons that Evo Morales announced in January that the Bolivian government was going to establishing a new tourist visa requirement U.S. visitors to Bolivia. Right now that involves, basically, showing up at the airport and getting a free 90-day stamp in your passport. In the La Paz airport it also comes with free oxygen. Morales declared his intent to make Bolivia's visa rules more akin to those faced by his Bolivian brethren seeking passage to Arlington. Six months later there is still no word of what that new visa process will look like or when it will begin (I checked again with the Bolivian Embassy in Washington on Friday).

As for the U.S. process, it seems that there is little that officials in La Paz can do other than follow the strict rules from Washington. But I do have one suggestion of how Embassy staff in the world's highest capital might warm things up a little. I think some of Bolivian's resentment is the whole experience of standing in a cold morning line outside a building that, to be honest, looks like a tall, squat concrete bunker built for warfare. What widow from Tarata wouldn't be intimidated?

So here is my suggestion for my friends at the U.S. Embassy – Api and Buñuelos!

Across Bolivia, that is what people drink and eat in the dawn hours to fend off the cold – a hot purple glass of a drink made from red corn and an equally hot, slightly greasy, pastry with a tad of white cheese in the middle. You take some of that $114 and you hire a few Paceña women to prepare and hand out free Api and Bunuelos to the people on line, courtesy of the U.S. government. Now that might give the U.S. Embassy here a different feel!

Or better yet, have them handed out by the Ambassador. An Uncle Sam suit would be optional.

A Short Addition (Monday, July 25)

After I published the Embassy's proud boast last week that it had gotten the wait period for a visa interview down to 3 weeks, the news came in that it might not just be so, including a chargrined note from the Embassy itself. Due to the change of staffing among Consular officials, the current wait is now 6 weeks. We have no word yet as to whether the added wait time will be compensated for with the handout of free Api and Bunuelos.

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.

Bolivia to Require US Visitors to Get Visas

If you look in the American Heritage Dictionary (New College Edition, 2005) under the term royal pain in the ass, for definition number three you will find the words:

Noun. The experience a Bolivian goes through to seek a tourist entry visa to the United States.

Bolivians seeking tourist entry to the US have the pleasure of completing the following steps:

1. Pay $110 (twice the monthly minimum wage) at a DHL office for the honor of submitting a visa application and seeking an interview at the US Embassy in La Paz.

2. Wait (usually months) for your interview to be scheduled.

3. Travel to La Paz and wait in a long line in Arctic-like morning weather outside the fortress-like, white US Embassy.

4. Approach the first window and have your paperwork reviewed (including submission of all kinds of personal economic information, such as bank statements, employment letters, etc.). Have a good chance of being turned away right then for completing the confusing (English-only) forms incorrectly.

5. Advance to a second window for questioning about your intentions. By the luck of the draw you might chat through the thick glass window with someone who is friendly, or with an official who seems interested in turning surly into a fine art.

6. Stand a good 9 out of 10 chance of being denied (no refund of the $110 you paid the US government for the experience).

I have watched the attrition process a few times while making my own visits to the “interview room” at the Embassy. Denial, in many cases, seems just arbitrary. My landlord, an accountant at the university in his 40s with a family here and two houses, got denied a visa to visit his relatives in Nebraska. Did the US government really think he was sneaking in to become a day laborer in Arlington? [Added note #1: Undocumented Bolivian immigrants speaking Quechua, by the way, played a key role in rebuilding the Pentagon after 9/11.]

What’s the current process for someone from the US to enter Bolivia as a tourist?

1. Get off the plane from Miami.

2. Hand the friendly fellow at the immigration desk the ten- line, half-page immigration form that lists your birth date, nationality and destination.

3. Get a free 90-day entry visa and collect your luggage (You do have to pay $45 to leave.)

So, it is no surprise that many Bolivians feel like the process between our two nations isn’t exactly reciprocal and on January 1st President Evo Morales issued an executive decree mandating that, starting soon, citizens of the US visiting Bolivia will need to have pre-arranged entry visas.

[Added note #2: If US citizens want to stay long-term they face visa requirements equally as cumbersome as the US, including an AIDS test and many days spent in long lines.]

The Troubling Game of Bolivian Visa Math

Okay, let’s dispense with the self-disclosure and politics first.

No, my family and I are not likely to be affected by the new requirement. My wife and I (we have lived here for more than nine years) have permanent resident visas in our blue US passports so we can come and go as we please. Our three children each have dual citizenship and two passports.

Yes, Bolivia certainly has both a legitimate right to assert whatever entry rules it desires and, as noted above, has ample justification to let the process for people from the US coming here be a little more like it is the other way around. Evo also asserted security concerns recalling that, last March, a deranged Californian came here as a US tourist and exploded bombs in two La Paz hotels, leaving two people dead.

So, with the legitimacy of Bolivia’s demand recognized, let’s take a look at the practical side of things.

What the new visa process for US citizens (and potentially Europeans as well) will look like remains unclear, but here is how it was described in today’s Cochabamba daily, Opinion:

What US visitors would be required to submit:

1. A birth certificate.
2. A certificate of residency (which we don’t actually have in the US).
3. Documentation of financial assets (bank records, etc.).
4. Documentation of employment.

This is essentially a mirror of the US requirements for Bolivians, and all would-be visitors would have to solicit such a visa from the Bolivian Embassy in Washington.

Tourism industry officials in Bolivia were quick to express their objections to the plan and their worries that it will cost Bolivia a lucrative chunk of its tourism trade. The Vice-minister of Government Coordination dismissed those concerns, noting, “…besides, the number of US citizens entering the country is minimal.”

So let’s do a little math.

With Aerosur now joining LAB and American Airlines to offer direct service to and from Miami (and AA adding three new incoming flights a week) that means that each week there are about 18 flights headed here directly from the US. The planes headed here each have a seating capacity of about 200. Let’s assume (for purposes of argument) that just one in ten of those seats is filled by a US citizen coming in as a tourist. That would mean about 360 people per week, almost 19,000 per year.

In December I paid a visit to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington and to the country’s competent new Ambassador. The Embassy has a current staff of seven, with a heavy burden of existing responsibilities for diplomatic relations, dealing with the Bolivian immigrant community and other tasks. If everyone, including the Ambassador, dropped everything and did nothing but process US tourist visas eight hours per day, five days per week, for fifty weeks a year (trust me, they are going to need two weeks off), that translates out to 2,700 visas per staff member, or about ten per day per person.

Likely Effects

To be sure, a lot of visitors will just deal with it. I travel all over the world for work and I have had to leap through hoops tougher than this. My favorite was when I had to send my US passport by Federal Express to the Ugandan Embassy in Washington, only to have Fed. Ex. send it back to me in Bogotá, Colombia instead of Cochabamba, Bolivia (all those Bs, Cs, and As could confuse anyone). I barely got my passport back in time to travel (and failed in my effort to get my passport frequent flier miles for its round the world tour).

A good many other people won’t be so willing to jump through the new Bolivian visa hoops. What portion of those tourists who head to Machu Pichu and then add on a week’s worth of visiting to La Paz or Lake Titicaca will just respond by saying, “I have to send my passport and bank records to the Bolivian Embassy in Washington? Hmmm, I hear Lima is nice.” If so, that translates into a good many restaurant, hotel and other tourism related jobs that are going to get a lot less plentiful.

Now maybe the Bolivian government has already planed all of this out and has some surprise streamlined process ready to spring on us that will avoid all this. I am willing to take on-line bets that it doesn’t. Maybe this will turn out to be more bluster than substance. That’s a possibility too.

Again, in my opinion Bolivia has a fair point to make about the entry requirements being so vastly different for Bolivians and US citizens to visit one another’s countries. But there are also ways to do visas that are less cumbersome. In the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, I got my visa [legally] at the airport in the middle of the night for a reasonable price. The same in Croatia. Brazil didn’t ask for any bank records but did make me pay $100 (but in Brazil they throw in beaches, which Bolivia doesn’t).

In other words, Bolivia may be faced with the dilemma that what seems fair in one way, will end up being both economically damaging and a bureaucratic mess in other ways.

Perhaps what Bolivia should do is require visiting tourists to bring in bagels. It would demonstrate just a little more of a commitment to come here and I know a few people who would take them off the government’s hands at a fair price.