From a preferred destination to a most-avoided holiday spot – the downslide in the Indo-Australian tourism sector has come rather fast in the wake of the alleged racist attacks on Indians there. Indian tourists are cancelling plans to travel Down Under after watching the plight of Indian students there.
“We’ve just stopped selling Australia as a destination to our clients. We are instead asking them to go to Singapore etc,” says chairman of STIC travels, Subhash Goyal.
In March 2009 alone, as many as 30, 500 Indians had travelled to Austarlia. But that has changed now.
“We used to send at least 200 tourists to Australia in one month. It’s now come down to 40 or so. People are very worried about their safety and security. If it doesn’t stop, it will affect long term plans,” says another travel agent Inderpreet Singh Sodhi.
And while and even Tourism Minister Kumar Selja has cancelled her trip to the Oz land, the Indian Tourism Ministry is trying hard to play down the panic.
“We are saying go to Australia. These are isolated incidents. After all how did we project ourselves after 26/11? Things are fine,” says Tourism Secretary, Sujit Banerjee.
After all, Australians have been among the top five foreign tourists coming in to India.
Ok, so you’ve been on the plane for 13 hours straight, and the baby next to you just wouldn’t stop crying. The plane food was horrible, and you think you’re starting to smell. So finally, you’ve arrived. You’re here. Finally.
But wait, you’ve still got immigration and quarentine to queue up for. Now who’s excited!? Here are a few tips that may help you schedule for the shortest wait, the easiest transition, and ultimately fewer headaches. Hopefully your experience was as easy as mine.
Avoid landing in the afternoon when most flights from Europe are arriving. Fewer aircraft land in the evening. Virgin has a flight into Newark at 11.10pm, American Airlines has one to JFK at 10.50pm while BA has arrivals at Boston at 9.55pm and Washington Dulles at 10.40pm. Air New Zealand’s daily service from Heathrow reaches LA at 7.45pm. If the thought of getting into town late is scary, prebook a transfer, for example through Super Shuttle. Alternatively, for early birds, American Airlines reaches Chicago from Heathrow every day at 10.20am and BA arrives at JFK at 11.20am.
Don’t dawdle. You need to get to the head of the immigration queue fast. First and business-class passengers have priority disembarkation, but in economy try to reserve a seat as far forward as possible to get off before most of your fellow flyers. Website www.seatguru.com has seat maps, and most airlines let you choose a seat when you book.
Fly in to an airport with fewer international arrivals. British Airways flies to Tampa, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle and Baltimore. US Airways flies to Charlotte, North Carolina, Delta flies to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Continental has flights to Cleveland (Ohio). Northwest arrives at Detroit and Minneapolis and American Airlines has a daily Gatwick-Raleigh (North Carolina) flight. If connecting through Frankfurt, Lufthansa has a useful Portland (Oregon) service, while KLM/Northwest (via Amsterdam) flies to Memphis (Tennessee).
Fill out the green visa-waiver form correctly. Sounds easy, but the boxes and lines are close together and confusing. Take two in case you bodge one.
Smile. You’re jetlagged and dehydrated, but if you sat in a booth for hours processing forms, you’d be grumpy, too. The more pleasant and cooperative you are, the faster you’ll make it through the queue.
Thanks to Times Online for help with this article. Photo courtesy of El Fotokapismo
The United States has been displaced by China as the world’s third most-visited country. In 2007, overseas visitors to the United States numbered 23.2 million, 11 percent fewer than in 2000. Visits from Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Brazil are all still down.
These are the latest statistics from the Travel Industry Association (TIA), a Washington-based lobby group which says the government is not doing enough to dispel worldwide perceptions of the United States as unfriendly to international travellers.
As a result, billions of tourist dollars go elsewhere at a time when global travel is booming.
Since the United States began tightening security after Sept. 11, 2001, US visa requirements and airport entry procedures have become the stuff of legend.
Citizens of all but 29 countries need visas to travel to the United States. This is a process that requires making an appointment for a visa interview. Once that is granted – it can take months, depending on the country — the applicant has to report for a face-to-face interview at an American consulate.
Forget travel at short notice. Or even long notice, if you are a citizen of Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Chile, or Venezuela (where you have to wait 162 days for an interview). For an official list of wait times, see the US Department of State’s Web site http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/wait/tempvisitorstwait.php.
The site features a list of reassuring promises which speak volumes about how the process is perceived by many: “We will treat you with dignity and respect … We will treat you as an individual … We will remember that, to you, a visa interview may be a new or intimidating experience and that you may be nervous.”
Many are equally nervous once they arrive at a US airport, where all foreigners are photographed and fingerprinted. In a 2006 survey commissioned by the travel industry, more than half of those polled said immigration officials were rude. Two thirds feared they might be detained for saying the wrong thing or making a simple mistake.
The US entry process, the survey found, had created “a climate of fear and frustration”. Fears of harassment or detention are rarely justified and the United States has no monopoly on stern-faced officials. But the perceptions are enough to make tourists think twice about visiting the United States — despite the fact that a weak dollar has turned America into a bargain basement for Europeans.
Like most statistics, the TIA numbers tell only part of the story. The decline in overseas visits, for example, does not apply to New York, target of the attacks which spurred tight security and visa regulations in the first place. Preliminary figures for 2007 show a record 7.6 million, up from 6 million in 2000.
DON’T JUST SIT THERE
One of the reasons: New York’s mayor, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, has been spending millions of dollars on campaigns to promote his city. His view on the subject: “The days of New York City sitting there and saying ‘we’re New York, they’re going to come to us’ are long gone. People have alternatives to go anywhere in the world. We are in competition for tourists.”
What applies to the city applies to the country as a whole but neither the federal government nor congress have embraced the concept of national tourism promotion the way it is done, for example, in Canada, Australia, France or New Zealand.
The United States is one of the few major countries that has no national campaign to attract foreign visitors — partly a function of the widespread belief here that America is so exceptional it does not need to court anyone.
The travel industry disagrees and is lobbying fiercely for passage of a bill, the Travel Promotion Act of 2007. It would provide for $100 million drawn from a $10 surcharge levied on overseas travellers and matched by $100 million from the industry to promote tourism.
The campaign would be run by an independent, non-profit corporation whose job would be to entice foreign visitors to come to the United States and explain visa and entry regulations, and the reasons for them, more clearly than the government has done so far.
Improvements have in fact gone virtually unnoticed. Visa wait times in India, for example, have been cut sharply over the past year, from 184 days to nine days in Mumbai and just two days in New Delhi. Similarly, the time in Mexico City shrank from 91 to eight days. The bill has run into opposition from conservatives who argue that America’s tourism giants — from Disney and Marriott to Hilton and American Express — can pay for their own promotion. The counter-argument: This is not only about money, it is also about public diplomacy, winning foreign hearts and minds by showing them the wonders of America.
There is no dispute that the image of the United States is bleak in the eyes of most of the world. There is no dispute either that people who have visited the United States tend to feel more favourable about the country than those who have not — a string of polls attests to that.
Some of the travel industry’s suggestions have been brushed outside although they involved no cost and little effort. A voluminous set of recommendations for a friendlier arrival experience includes the following: “All foreign travellers into the US should be greeted at the inspection booth with the words ‘Welcome to the United States…”‘
You don’t hear that very often.
SFGate.com profiled a few women who have immigrated from India to America recently, and found out how life in a country has been for them, at home, while their husbands are off working.
Reema Shahani, 26, who holds a master’s degree in human rights, fills her day looking for recipes online.
Varkha Chellani, 37, a former credit analyst, keeps herself busy taking care of two children.
And former computer programmer Gomathy Kannan, 25, is taking dancing classes and writing a blog.
Shahani, Chellani and Kannan are among the thousands of women who came to the United States on the coattails of their husbands’ H-1B visas, granted to highly skilled professionals to fill jobs at the software companies and technology labs of Silicon Valley. But under the conditions of their H-4 dependent visas, spouses are not allowed to work here. Often highly educated and skilled, they find themselves in the uncomfortable position of social and financial dependency on their husbands, while struggling to adjust to life in a new country.
The State Department issued more than 135,000 H-1B visas in 2006, together with about 74,000 H-4 visas for their spouses. A lot of the H-1B visas go to workers in Silicon Valley: The area’s companies employ about 35,000 H-1B holders, estimates the Silicon Valley Indian Professionals Association. And the majority are workers from Asia, according to the Department of Homeland Security – nearly 45 percent of all H-1B petitions approved in fiscal year 2005 were for workers born in India.
In Silicon Valley, many of the Indian women’s stories are similar. Most were born into higher castes in India, graduated with college degrees in computer science or business, worked in fast-paced companies, had a support network of friends and family. Moving to the United States seemed like a great opportunity, but all too often there was little discussion about the terms of their immigration status. Now, while their husbands are climbing the career ladder, they stay at home alone, isolated.
“There is a high level of depression in that community because those women are not integrating into society by working, and it prolongs the homesickness,” said immigration lawyer Shivali Shah, who did a survey of 100 H-4 holders. “They usually arrive during their prime working years, and it is very demoralizing for them.”
Killing time
Reema Shahani swapped the turmoil of city life in Delhi for a quiet suburban apartment in Santa Clara.
While her husband has a thriving career in a giant high-tech company, Shahani spends her days browsing the Internet and watching the Food Network. When she arrived in 2006, she did not have a driver’s license and her world was reduced to the size of a two-bedroom apartment.
“It is really sad. You sit alone the whole day and don’t do anything,” Shahani said. “I would always tell my husband, ‘Why should I be here? It’s a complete waste of my time.’ ”
After the first year, frustrated with the monotony of her new life, Shahani began volunteering at the Indian Community Center in Milpitas, where she met other women in the same situation.
Many women prefer the immigration forums and chat rooms on the Internet, where they can pour their hearts out anonymously. Malathy Jey, founder of Indusladies.com, a networking site for Indian women based in Austin, Texas, estimates that her site receives about 2 million page views a month.
Jey, 32, who worked as an IT specialist for Ford Motor Co. in Chennai, India, before moving to Austin on an H-4 visa with her husband, said she came up with the idea for the Web site during long days spent at home looking for things to do.
Indusladies.com offers relationship advice and recipes, as well as the opportunity for women to share their frustrations with the immigration process.
“I got married to an H-1B visa holder, which put me in H-4 visa status – yes, that dreaded H-4,” wrote one of the users. “Being H-4, I can’t work or earn a single dollar and all I can do is stay at home and stare at the four walls.”
While couples can apply for permanent residency, or a green card, which would allow the dependent spouse to work, the process can take years, and Indian and Chinese immigrants face annual quotas set by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
“I’ve gone through my ups and downs and was even regretting being here,” said Varkha Chellani, who has been waiting for seven years for a green card, while her friends achieve career success in India.
Potential benefit
Chellani, who brings her 2-year-old daughter Vidhi to weekly play dates at the community center, is interested in early childhood education and has been volunteering at the center developing classroom curriculum for the kids. She would like to go back to school, she said, but paying tuition while living on one income and supporting two kids is a challenge.
Volunteering is another common strategy for the women, who are afraid future employers are going to question gaps in their resumes, and many local nonprofit groups are taking notice, said John Power, executive director of the matching service Thevolunteercenter.net, which works with agencies in San Francisco and San Mateo counties.
“They are individuals who have had a professional background and are looking for some proper ways to continue their careers,” Power said. “It’s very desirable to find people with such skills, and the potential benefit is huge.”
Some women, including Kannan, who sometimes had to stay in the office in Chennai until 3 a.m., see their H-4 status as an opportunity to take a break and do the things they never had time for, such as painting or dancing. Kannan, however, also volunteers as a computer specialist at the Indian Community Center once a week.
“It really helps me to do something useful,” Kannan said. Her husband agrees.
“He feels that I should be working with the technology. Otherwise I will be lagging behind.”
Skilled visa holders
135,000
approximate number of H-1B visas issued by the State Department in 2006
74,000
approximate number H-4 visas for spouses issued the same year
35,000
approximate number of H-1B workers in Silicon Valley area companies
So you’ve made it. You were happily greeted by the friendly Customs beagle and you gave up your bunch of bananas, and now you find yourself breathing the fresh airport air. Nevermind that, you’re in Australia. Where are you going? Where are you staying? Unless you’ve got friends and family already in Australia, finding a place to live, even temporarily can be difficult. The rental market, especially in Sydney has an almost 0% vacancy rate at the moment, and when you do find something, the rental prices are usually fairly high. It’s not fun.
Our transition back to Australia was an interesting one. My girlfriend already owned a place here. It’s a nice place, though not terribly big. The only issue I had with it was…someone was already living in it. She had it rented out for the time in which we were overseas, and the tenants were still within their lease. Ok, that’s fine. What now?
Before we moved, I had tried to give notice at my job in the Bay Area. Instead of quitting, I found myself with a job that I could keep and was now able to work from home overseas. Hmm, we now need a bigger place to live. It’s time to start looking.
So that’s exactly what we did. We started looking. And looking, and looking. We came up with a list of places that we found interesting.
One of the main real estate websites, at least for the Sydney area is Domain.com.au. It’s a pretty thorough site for individuals looking to buy or rent. This is where we found our place. From overseas. And bought it.
Yep. We bought a place, from overseas. Please, please, please…whatever you do, don’t do this. In the end, it worked out just fine. We love our new place. It’s a fantastic house, with a beautiful yard, and was within our budget. My girlfriends parents lived close to the property so they did a few walkthroughs and took many photos. The stress from buying the house wasn’t from the property itself, but from the fact that we were overseas. The overnighting of paperwork was a never ending process, and the current mortgage crisis made things even more difficult. We had to cancel all outstanding credit card accounts, even though none of them even had a balance, and get each credit card provider to write a letter saying the account was paid off.
Of course, you can’t buy a place in Australia until you’re authorised to live/work here, so that will probably cause you to scramble last minute and find something. Ultimately, it’s probably easier to find a place to rent month to month, and search for a place when you’re already here. Try out realestate.com.au. This is another property bible. It has properties for rent, sale and share accommodation and gives a good comparison for all states, the only problem is that you’ll have to know roughly what area you want to live in, in which case go to whereis.com.au and get a map of the city.
Declining house number stats are expected to force up rents and maintain pressure on inflation and interest rates in the coming months and perhaps years, but there’s no better investment than property, and if you can make the jump into owning your own place, jump. It’s a fantastic endevour and there’s nothing better than making a house your home, especially in a country you love.
Walking off the plane and into the new country that will become your new home is an unforgettable experience. Looking around at what will soon become a familiar sight can be almost overwhelming. My flight was a fairly uneventful, 14 1/2 hour flight from Los Angeles on United. Granted, I would recommend other airlines based on comfort levels and customer service, but I really couldn’t beat their price for a one way ticket (which can sometimes run as much as a round trip ticket). United Airlines, or not, I was here. Finally. After a tedious and nerve racking VISA application process, I had made. But let’s back up here. I think the whole VISA process deserves a mention. It is after all, one of, if not the most important step for moving overseas. Not only is it time consuming, but it’s expensive. Very expensive. For most people here, myself included, it’s worth ever penny ( or Pound or Euro or…).
Anyways, these are all stories that will be told. Not now though, it’s late. My goal is to make this a helpful site for those interested in moving to Australia, as well as adjusting to life in other countries. I found only a handful of sites that were actually helpful during my process of moving, and I suppose it remains to be seen how helpful this one will actually be, but at least it’ll be entertaining, and another way to pass the time.
