Los Angeles, CA – L.A. Holocaust Museum Fights U.S. Immigration Service to Force Visa for Austrian National.

Los Angeles, CA – The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust has filed an appeal challenging a visa denial by the U.S.Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service(“USCIS”).

USCIS denied a visa last month to a young English-speaking Austrian man, Valentin Hofer, who elected to fulfill his national service requirement by volunteering at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. The agency justified its denial of a visa for Hofer on several grounds, including a claim that the Austrian, who has completed extensive studies on Holocaust history at an Austrian museum and speaks fluent English, lacked “competence” to qualify for the assignment in Los Angeles.

The museum’s appeal accuses Homeland Security of numerous mistakes in denying so-called “cultural exchange” visas to Austrians hoping to do volunteer work in the United States under this provision of Austrian law which allows its citizens to fulfill their military obligations through service in Holocaust institutions abroad.

“Here we have someone born and bred in a country with its own, difficult World War II history trying to spend a year working at a museum dedicated to Holocaust commemoration, reconciliation and education,” said Mark A. Rothman, the Museum’s Executive Director. “This inexplicable denial frustrates the intention of this young man to strengthen relations between his country and ours.” [lamoth]