Section A
(89) What questions do visa officers have in mind when they face a student applying for a visa? Here is the gist of what Consul General David T. Hopper, the head of visa operations at the American embassy, explained:
Are you a genuine student, headed to the US for the purpose of studying? (90) Some applicants use fake documents, or have no real intention of attending college in America--the whole project is just a ruse (计策) to get to the US. The officers look closely at 1-20 forms, diplomas and school records for evidence of fraud.
Can you pay for your studies? (91) Some applicants have full scholarships, but many are self-supporting, so the visa officer must make sure the money is available.
Are you really going to America to study and only to study, not to work? [The problem here is work after graduation, not part-time campus jobs while the student is in an academic program.] Do you intend to leave the US when you have your degree? (92) Of course this is quite difficult to prove to the visa officer, and correspondingly difficult for the visa officer to judge. But the visa officer cannot simply ignore US visa law, which states that (93) if you give a person a student visa ,you must be convinced that he intends to leave the US when his studies are finished.
(94)
The British political scene is dominated by two major parties that have quite different political agendas. However, the ideological distance between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party has become less marked, and their policies more difficult to tell apart in recent years. In fact, it would be true to say that both parties consist of conservative, moderate and radical elements, and therefore the general public is often perplexed about which party to vote for. Nonetheless, it is usual to find that a British voter will lean towards supporting one of these two parties and remain faithful to that party for life.
The Labour Party's manifest objective is to safeguard the interests of the common working man and woman, and, in effect, give them political representation in Parliament. The Party has always had strong connections with the trade unions, and, before coming to power, was passionately committed to the concept of a welfare society in which people who are less fortunate than others are politically and financially assisted in their quest for a more equitable slice of the economic pie. The main problem is that such socialist agendas are extremely expensive to implement and maintain, even in a comparatively wealthy country with a large working and, hence, taxpaying population base. Welfare societies tend towards bankruptcy unless government spending is kept in check. Fortunately, the present government recognizes this, and has resisted reckless spending.
The Conservative Party, on the other hand, argues that the best way to ensure a fair division of wealth in the country is to allow more freedom to create it. This, in turn, means more job opportunities created, and therefore more wealth available to all. Just how the poor are to share in the distribution of this wealth (beyond being given, at least in theory, the opportunity to create it)is, however, less well understood. Practice, of course, may make nonsense of even the best theoretical intensions, and often the less practically powerful are badly catered for under governments implementing "free-for-all" policies.
It is surprising, given the current homogeneity of the two major parties, that less attention than elsewhere in Europe is paid to the smaller political parties such as the Greens and the Liberal Democrats. This may be because British voters distrust parties with platforms based around one or two major current issues alone ; the Green Party, for example, is almost solely concerned with the environment. Moreover, when it comes to casting a vote, history shows that the British public tends to resist change and, thus, the status quo is maintained.
Summary :
Two parties control the British political scene: the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Although recently there are many similarities to be seen in their【76】, British voters tend to stay loyal for life to the party of their choice. The Labour Party, encouraged by the【77】, supports a welfare-based society, whereas the Conservative Party believes that【78】to pursue the creation of wealth ensures that all will eventually benefit from the【79】created. Oddly, Britons do not follow Europeans by paying much attention to smaller political, parties, perhaps because their policies are based on just a few【80】political issues.
(71)