On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> wrote: > > [0] Interestingly Brazil has some of the same baggage of a vast poor > underbelly as India; but it fares vastly better on the visa waiver > thing. There's greater segregation of the population there of course, > and some racism, but still an interesting data point.
A Brazilian nearly gets a long way by talking about football. And no, I'm not kidding. That really does happen. There are other things happening here, too, of course. 1. We have higher average income and higher average education level (notice I said average education. You have a lot more top people than we do). 2. Also, one thing that I think is very important: Brazilians who show up at an airport in the US or Europe are usually white and don't look that different from, say, an Italian, Spanish or sometimes a German. Many of the Brazilians who travel abroad have European last names. Those things defuse many of the racist triggers from immigration personnel. 3. There are is a growing middle class holding overvalued currency who travel the world spending a lot of money on trivial things. There is a huge pressure American authorities from tourism businesses now to improve the visa process. Just last month the US consulate in Brazil announced they are opening 3 more visa offices and that's after they had already reduced the wait time from 3 months about 2 years ago to about 2 weeks now. In the next 5 years it is likely no visas will be required from Brazilians. Andre Andre
