Medvid denied tourist visa for visit to United States (10/22/00)

Medvid denied tourist visa for visit to United States

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Almost exactly 15 years after Myroslav Medvid - then a 25-year-old Ukrainian sailor and today a clergyman - swam to the shores of New Orleans to plead for political asylum only to be escorted back to his Soviet grain trawler by U.S. immigration officials and returned to the Soviet Union, the U.S. government has told him again that he is not wanted in the United States.

Thirteen days before the anniversary date of his ill-fated defection attempt on October 11, the U.S. Consulate in Kyiv, which is responsible for issuing visas to Ukrainian citizens who wish to travel to the United States, denied the Rev. Medvid permission because, in its opinion, he failed to document that he was not intending to immigrate to the United States.

The Public Affairs section of the U.S. Embassy issued a terse statement in response to efforts by The Weekly to obtain more details about the Medvid decision. The statement said: "The applicant was denied a visa because he was unable to overcome the presumption of intending immigration as required by section 214 (B) of the Immigration and Nationalities Act."

Contrary to criminal law, U.S. immigration law holds that every visa applicant is viewed as a potential immigrant and considered guilty until he proves his innocence by overcoming the burden of proof, which the Rev. Medvid failed to do in the eyes of Kyiv consular officials.

The Rev. Medvid said his request for a two-month tourist visa was turned down after he endured an unusually long two-hour wait in the consular offices of the U.S. Embassy, during which he was questioned not only by the consular officer at the window to which he was assigned, as is customary, but also by a second consular official.

"Let them do what they want," said a disappointed Mr. Medvid hours after his visa application was rejected. "I have a parish to take care of, I have things to do." And then he added, "If they don't respect an invitation from a long-established and reputable Ukrainian American organization, then what am I to think?"

The Rev. Medvid, now 40 years old and a parish priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in western Ukraine, had applied for a visitor's visa for travel to the United States after receiving an invitation from the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America to take part in a Great Famine commemoration that is scheduled for November 18 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

In an article in The Weekly earlier this year, the Rev. Medvid had expressed his desire to return to the United States on the 15th anniversary of the debacle for a short visit to thank and pray with those people who he believes saved his life. He said that the hundreds of Ukrainian Americans who corresponded with their politicians, together with U.S. officials who held hearings and even traveled to Ukraine after the failed asylum attempt, kept his name in the international spotlight, which made Soviet officials wary of punishing him.

Otherwise, he believes he would have died in a Soviet gulag long ago.

His decision to visit the United States came after The Weekly tracked down the long-forgotten sailor and published a story on what had happened to him in the following 15 years. That feature story spurred other articles, including stories in the Moscow Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

The Rev. Medvid now joins many other citizens of Ukraine who complain daily that they were unfairly denied the possibility of traveling to the U.S. to visit relatives and friends, or as tourists, because of the harsh requirements imposed on them - specifically the need to prove that one is leaving behind sufficient real estate and income, among other things, to assure the U.S. government that one will return to Ukraine.

To be sure, the consular division faces the huge and unenviable daily task of interviewing dozens of individuals and sifting through heaps of documentation to determine who among the people - who have waited at times for hours outside their doors - intends to merely visit and not permanently stay in the United States.

The situation is complicated by the fact that among Ukrainians who seek a visitor's visa many do indeed attempt to gain illegal entry into the United States for work or with the intention of staying permanently by defrauding and deceiving with lies and forged documents.

The consular section of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv generally rejects some 40 percent of the applicants because they have failed to prove that they will not abandon their current residences, or have defined their purpose of travel in a way that does not conform to one of the non-immigrant visa categories delineated by law.

According to documents handed to the Rev. Medvid after he was rejected, he failed to meet the first requirement, which is the most common basis for denying a non-immigrant visa.

Although initially disappointed by the rejection, the Rev. Medvid now says that he will attempt to have the decision altered by consular officials through the appeals process. He explained that he believes he should not have taken for granted that consular officers would automatically trust the words and indications of a man of the cloth.

"I now have my bishop fully involved and will submit the necessary support documents explaining that I am a parish priest in good standing in the eparchy and that I intend to go nowhere except back to Ukraine after my visit," explained the Rev. Medvid.

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