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The Chairman of MEI’s Board of Governors, Wyche Fowler, and I were deeply disturbed by the extreme reaction we encountered in the business community in Saudi Arabia in December toward the United States and toward the Administration’s visa and immigration policies. The sense was that our primary institutions are prejudiced and not particularly interested in the problems of others or in the facts. In this article, I wanted to highlight a particular critical issue they raised that does not get much attention from our media.

The United States is losing the battle for public opinion in the region for many reasons. But one of the most practical reasons, and probably the easiest to fix, is the restrictive visa policy and the hostile behavior of some of our officials at our borders which have prevailed since September 11, 2001.

According to our Embassy in Riyadh, visa applications in Saudi Arabia have declined by 70 percent since before September 11. Applications in the Arab world as a whole have declined 40 percent. At the same time, the refusal rate in Saudi Arabia has stayed the same at about 2 percent. Saudi businessmen we talked to said they could not do business with the United States given the long lead time for visas, and they would not subject themselves to the indignities of US border controls. They cited horror stories of strip searches, cavity examinations, and long waits off line to be questioned. They admitted that the stories may be exaggerated but said that all that was needed was a single bad incident. In the close knit Saudi business community, such news spreads like wildfire and has a profound impact. The Saudis said that they were moving their business to Europe and noted that British and French tenders now advertised that visas would be accorded within 72 hours. The American business community was deeply concerned that US policies would eat into their bottom line over time. The cost of the new US policy to US business would mount into the billions of dollars.

Even more troubling to the Saudi business community was the drop in student visas. Many families were reluctant to send their children to the United States to study because of the fear of prejudice and ill treatment due to their national origin. Students were transferring to European universities in record numbers. Saudi businessmen pointed out that their ties to the United States had been formed in their university days and that they preferred US suppliers because of this experience. The next generations of Saudi managers will likely look to Europe for supplies and services. In addition, although the United States is advocating democracy, the very people in Saudi and the rest of the Gulf that could lead this effort were the graduates of US universities. Over 60 percent of the members of the Shura Council in Saudi Arabia have advanced degrees from the United States. This is an incalculable asset for those in the region who are advocating economic reform and democratization.

Our Saudi interlocutors were also concerned that the United States, which historically had taken the lead in human rights and democracy building, was now engaging in practices such as detention without trial, trial by military courts, and other practices which it had condemned roundly in the Middle East in the past. As a result, regimes in the region felt they had a blank check to engage in such practices themselves all in the name of combating terrorism. The United States was losing the moral high ground.

Everyone we spoke to understood the need for careful scrutiny of visitors as a result of the terrorist threat. And each one was quick to point out that Saudi procedures were also restrictive. But they urged us to consider measures that would discriminate between a high potential threat and businessmen and students that had a clear record and did not fit a threat profile. For example, they suggested that full time students headed to four-year degree granting universities and to graduate schools could be handled on a special fast track. Such students should be treated differently from those going to special short courses like flying schools that could be used as an access point for short-term terrorist planning or operations. Certainly, businessmen that have been coming to the United States for years without incident should be accorded a different status than a one-time visitor. What these businessmen could not understand was that the United States, with all its technological capabilities, could not devise a faster, more efficient and more consumer friendly system for low threat proven visitors. We had no answer for their questions.