#13 - JRL 8183 - JRL Home
From: "David M Rowell" <David@Rossia.com>
Subject: Visa Question
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004

An acquaintance of mine is a single attractive young lady in Moscow. She recently applied for a visa to visit the US, and to my cynical astonishment was granted a single entry B1/B2 visa, valid for a year.

Curiously, the visa contains on it an entry : "Annotation : Indicates 1 month stay in NY"

She (and I) wonder what this means. Is she to be restricted to the New York area only? While travel restrictions remain a feature of Russian diplomats visiting this country, my understanding was that regular Russian citizens, once admitted, are free to travel anywhere they choose.

The matter is not just of academic interest. In reality she wishes to include a short stay in SFO, either by way of entering the country in SFO, spend a few days there, then fly to NYC for the balance of her stay, or as a sidetrip from NYC. She had been advised by the Russian company that accepts visa applications on behalf of the US Embassy in Moscow (you can't directly submit a visa application to the Embassy any more!) not to mention the SFO stay at all, but just to talk about NYC.

This same company is now telling her that this annotation means she will be restricted to NY only, and can not go to SFO, and if she wants to include SFO in her itinerary, she'll have to apply for a visa revision. Rather self-serving and contradictory advice!

Is this a major change in visa issuing procedures? It is, of course, completely opposite to the liberalization of Russian visa issuing about seven years ago when you no longer had to name the cities you were to visit in Russia.

Comments/advice would be appreciated.