The Azerbaijani-Americans, who number some 400,000, overwhelming majority of whom are college-educated, is one of the groups that is raising its profile through the US Azeris Network (USAN) and wants to have its voice heard in Washington. The Azeri-Americans, like many other groups and organizations in US, want to see a comprehensive immigration reform, which while making our homeland secure, would not turn it into “fortress America”.

America’s and its citizens, such as ourselves’, trade, cultural, academic and personal relationships with the rest of the world, particularly with the former USSR, and specifically with our ancient homeland of Azerbaijan, depend a great deal on the ability of people to travel to the United States. The USAN is concerned with the reported deterioration to the issuance of visas in Azerbaijan and other post-Soviet states over the last few years.  While the Department of State has made some significant improvements, much more needs to be done to better facilitate the visa process and to allow unhindered and stress-free travel by ethnic Azerbaijani students, tourists, businesspeople, spouses and artists into the US.

International travel and tourism is critical to the US. The nation's businesses, their workers and the economy benefit from international commerce and tourism. Likewise, US universities benefit from tapping brightest talent from abroad. It is important that a potential customer from overseas can visit the US to examine and purchase products or services from an American company, or to negotiate deals. Multinational companies need to have the ability to move foreign based personnel, from time to time, to attend meetings or training in the US.  In the past few years, many of these basic interactions have been hindered. Travelers and businesses need predictability in our visa system to make sure that they can arrive on time to inspect products, for a conference, or even simply for their vacation.

The Azeri-Americans want this annoyance to stop and are asking for the following:

1) Have the US consulate in Baku streamline and expedite its visa-review and granting procedures. Over the past years, the US consulate in Azerbaijan has been extremely unreasonable in denying visas to families of eligible applicants. We hear of a number of cases of temporary workers and students who are working or studying in the US, who unsuccessfully tried to bring their families, to be together for the time of their studies or work.  The immigration laws specifically allow an F-1 student, or H-1 worker, to bring their families under F-2 or H-4 visas into the US for the duration of the principal's status.  However, the US consulate has been lately denying such visas for families of Azerbaijanis without any reasonable explanation.

Once an applicant has an interview, sometimes consular officers do not even read a person's documents, such as a letter from a company explaining why this person is coming to the US.  The unpredictable issuance of visas is a constant frustration, and in some circumstances visas will be issued for some members of a delegation, but not others, in a seemingly random way. The USAN routinely hears from organizations and individuals about these hurdles and problems. There is a need for transparency and consistency in the US visa process.

2) Simplify and accelerate the currently unacceptable terribly long process of a US Permanent Resident trying to bring his/her spouse home (currently, the process can take 6-7 years, during which the foreign spouse cannot enter the US);

3) There are no Azerbaijani language instructions for the Diversity Visa Lottery in the State Department's website.  But there are instructions in Armenian, despite it being a lesser-spoken language. The State Department must be more balanced and add a translation in Azerbaijani as well, to have an equal approach to all three South Caucasus states, and clamp down on abuses.


USAN thanks IS Law Firm for helping draft this letter.