chickenfeet

1066 and all that iconlove!

Indeed

(deleted comment)

From:

And with a suspiciously foreign name to boot

From:

commodorified.livejournal.com

Give them a break.

Arm, or leg?

From:

Well, we've all seen "Some Like It Hot", so we know what they really keep in their violin cases!

From:

a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com

Do you know if the requirements have changed for UK citizens?

From:

I'm not sure about for bog standard tourists but anybody doing any kind of work, including touring artists, sports persons, journalists etc, is required to have some sort of biometric thing done which must be done in person at Grosvenor Square.

From:

a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com

I was just wondering about academics coming in for short periods ... like conferences!

From:

Pretend to be a tourist!

From:

badasstronaut.livejournal.com

Ah yes, I heard an interview about that on Radio 4 in the car the other day.

From:

Ah yes. This is actually bullshit. On R4's Front Row a few days ago, they had a guy from the Halle and a guy from the US Embassy on to thrash it out.

Turns out that the guy from the Halle had all his facts wrong - and I mean, totally wrong... he had most of his information based on hearsay and old wives tales and very little based on talking to anyone from the US Embassy (eg the 45,000 quid was based on the assumption that the entire orchestra would have to stay the night in London beforehand in order to be standing in line for an 8am appointment, when in fact you can make appointments at any time of day if you book them long enough in advance - and given their tour was scheduled for September, there was plenty of time to book their appointments.)

PLUS the other thing I had not appreciated is that professional orchestras actually have to have work permits for the US (which has been the case for years and years) which is a completely different issue than getting an ordinary visa. The work permits were a complicating factor which never came out in the original alarmist story put out by the Yank-bashing lefty muso who hadn't got his facts straight....

From:

To be fair, I think it was clear that work permits were involved. What has changed is that one didn't used to have to show up in person to get one. A lawyer's lackey could take the relevant documentation in and get the thing done.

As to get an appointment for a specific time at the US embassy, it's like getting an appointment for a specific time at the doctor. You are lucky to be seen within three hours of the scheduled time.

From:

Ah but what the embassy guy said was, is that for large parties like orchestras they block out an hour and see everyone in one go, so no standing in line and waiting or delays. The Halle guy could have found that out if he'd bothered...

From:

If that's true then they have improved remarkably. Any contact I have had with the former INS (and there were many) was characterised by totally indifference and incompetence on their part. I'm a bit sceptical that what an embassy spokesbod says when under the cosh is actually reflective of what happens in practice.

From:

i have no doubt that for individuals the system sucks. but orchestras go to the US all the time (as the embassy bod said - although the Halle hasn't been for ages and in fact it was/is going to be their first ever concert at the Lincoln Center, so perhaps that explains their naivety slash ignorance) and the embassy has a system for processing them as one might expect.

anyway, the upshot of all this is that the Halle say they are trying to uncancel their tour.

(deleted comment)

From:

f4f3.livejournal.com

Cat herding comes to mind for some reason...

From:

They haven't denied that - but on the other hand, why should the US embassy send two officials all the way to Manchester for two hours of paperwork (which is apparently what the Halle were asking for), when they could otherwise be in Grosvenor Square the whole day processing visas for the likes of you and me?

As for orchestra logistics (which I also know something about as I used to play the double bass in the RCM orchestra) the main difficulty is with loading and transporting their instruments - and of course they won't be needing to take them to the US Embassy.

From:

The real issue is the US requirement for biometric visas of doubtful value for categories of visitor who are not in any way high risk. Perhaps if other governments started to cause as much inconvenience for the US they might reconsider. I suggest that the British government set up a centre for issuing "Smart Cards" to all US service personnel working in the UK and locate the processing centre in, say, Bismark ND. After all there is plenty of evidence that Islamic terrorists have supportersd in the US Armed Forces and none whatsoever that orchestras are any more of a threat than anybody else.

From:

I thought there was still a lot of doubt about biometrics full stop.

From:

There are! I think what we are seeing here is the general government tendency to find it more important to be seen to be doing Something than to figure out something effective and workable.

From:

But would they know now exactly who they were taking with them in the autumn? I always thought that among the second-rank musicians, membership was pretty flexible (no doubt with everyone trying to get as many gigs as possible...). OK, I've convinced myself - I am sure they would know, because any musician would beg to know where they would be playing months in advance!

From:

Well the Halle man did make that point: that female members of the band might get pregnant in the meantime and not be able to travel, for example. But that was more of a problem for the work permit, which has to be applied for six months in advance, not for the visa, which I believe they would get sometime in the eight weeks before the tour departs.

From:

In that case it would have been sensible for the embassy guy to do the usual and send letters to the newspapers explaining what the actual situation was. The only quotes I saw in any paper of any complexion were of people saying "Tough, but that's the rules. No relaxations, no exceptions, same for them as for everybody else".

From:

Just out of interest: I gather from your info that you live in the US. Do you have any personal experience of the procedures that have had to be undergone in recent years in trying to obtain visas in the UK? The picture that has emerged from incident after incident has been that the theoretical situation has been far more difficult, and in practice has been even worse. And there has been no official response that I have seen to say that "No, these problems do not exist".

From:

Don't jump to conclusions! You couldn't be more wrong about my personal circumstances. I live in the UK now, but I had a US visa, and travelled in and out of the US about thirty times in three and a half years (and this is post 9/11 we're talking) with nary a problem. In fact, the INS even let me in to the US when I'd forgotten all my paperwork.

From:

I didn't jump to conclusions; I looked at your user info, which said "Location: Virginia, United States". And what the US does for US citizens, and what it does for people who are not US citizens, are different things altogether.

From:

I don't want to argue over something so trivial, although being located in a country doesn't mean you are a citizen....

I'm not saying the US is perfect - no country is - and sometimes they make stupid mistakes and overreact, like handcuffing up that British journalist who didn't know she couldn't use the visa waiver for her work (and they've since apologised profusely for that, and changed their procedures for handling such cases). My own personal pet loathe is the ridiculous shoe and jacket removal procedure at airports, and the way the security screening officials shout at people - but then, they do that to everyone, US citizens and aliens alike, and the US citizens hate it just as much as we do.

But what I think people sometimes don't appreciate is how well-intentioned the Americans actually are. They're not trying to screw up the Halle Orchestra tour - they're trying to balance the needs of the majority with the (in this case, high profile) interests of the few. I wouldn't be surprised if they reviewed their procedures and maybe even made changes as a result of this - although they won't be thanked for doing so by those who will find any excuse to bash the Yanks.

From:

I never suggested that you were. The fact that your location was given as being in the US raised a (rebuttable) possibility that you had not had experience in travelling to the US as a UK citizen under the current regime. At no point, until you mentioned the fact, did I operate on the assumption that you were a US citizen; my only question was whether you had had personal experience of the problems that other people had had. If you had not had such personal experience, your description of accounts of problems as being "bullshit" would be hearsay evidence and therefore not particularly convincing.

One of the many uses of "location" information is to give correspondents some idea of what time zone people are in. If you are not currently in the US, it would be courteous to amend you user info, if only for this reason.

From: (Anonymous)

Bullshit was meant to describe the rather over-hysterical media reporting of the mostly ill-founded whinges of the Halle Orchestra, not the universe of challenges associated with global travel and security in the post 9/11 era, as I am sure you know perfectly well :)

From:

that was me by the way, I don't know why it came up as Anon

From:

gillen.livejournal.com

An right after 9/11? We must all go out and start shopping again or the tourists will have won!

From:

albionwood.livejournal.com

Here's a lovely little icon from our Great Uniter that pretty much says it all.

From:

f4f3.livejournal.com

Well I'm not going to take this lying down - I'm off to NYC to shop. (Can't type NYC without humming the absolutely brilliant Steve Earle song - the best rueful, torch-passing, touching rock-out by an ex-hellraiser featuring the guitar riff from his first hit I can think of).

From: