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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfghanistan's All-Girl Robotics Team Can't Get Visas To The US
Their robot may have permission to travel, but six teenage Afghan inventors are staying put this summer.
They've been rejected for a one-week travel visa to escort their robot to the inaugural FIRST Global Challenge an international robotics competition happening in Washington DC in mid-July.
The all-girl team representing Afghanistan hails from Herat, a city of half a million people in the western part of the country. To interview for their visas, the girls risked a 500 mile trek cross-country to the American embassy in Kabul the site of several recent suicide attacks and one deadly truck bomb in early June that killed at least 90 people. Despite the recent violence, the teenagers braved the trip to the country's capital not once, but twice, hoping a second round of interviews might help secure their 7-day visas after the team was rejected on its first try. But no luck.
Roya Mahboob, who founded Citadel software company in Afghanistan, and was the country's first female tech CEO, brought the group of girls together for the project.
It's a very important message for our people Mahboob says. Robotics is very, very new in Afghanistan.
She says when the girls first heard the bad news about their visas, they were crying all the day.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hilarybrueck/2017/06/29/denied-afghanistans-all-girl-robotics-team-cant-get-visas-to-the-u-s/#58436c0b367f
secondwind
(16,903 posts)StevieM
(10,500 posts)CurtEastPoint
(18,639 posts)atreides1
(16,072 posts)Remember they took the case, and let this part of it stand...instead of putting it all on hold, until they made a final decision!
None of those girls can show any connection to anyone or any business here in the US, so they don't meet the standards!!!
CurtEastPoint
(18,639 posts)Is there any recourse for these girls?
haele
(12,647 posts)This would be like participating in a Symposium, with business sponsors, or coming over on a speaking engagement to a business group.
Get the girls a US corporate sponsor (Elon, are you listening?) and bring them over.
Haele
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)It's been virtually impossible for an Afghan to get a travel visa to the US for many, many years.
The consular officials have to be convinced to you strong enough familiar, monetary and business ties in Afghanistan that you won't seek to stay in the US. Since virtually nobody does the vast, vast majority of visa applications are denied.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,922 posts)Gothmog
(145,130 posts)Locut0s
(6,154 posts)Not only did they create their robot from home made parts because the parts that were meant to be shipped to them were help up in custody, but they risked death on more than one occasion to get a US visa. The lead woman is also founder of the first female led software development company in Afghanistan. To say these women are courageous and remorseful would be a huge understatement. And yet course Trump's presidency denies them the visa.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)The consular officials who do visas will look at applicants and see what the likelihood of them overstaying a visa or trying to stay in the US is, and will deny anyone they think is likely to try and stay.
Even the interpreters who risked everything to work with US Forces and were promised a change to move to the US have been given nothing but hassles and roadblocks on their applications for the immigration visas they were promised. It's been happening for years.
They blanket deny almost every application from Afghanistan. If they don't judge that you have significant familiar, business and financial interests in Afghanistan that would drive you to come back and it overstay a visa or seek asylum they don't approve it. I bunch of teenage girls seeking to become better educated would be prime to seek asylum so they will never give them a visa.
Sadly that's been policy for more than a decade now.