After reading some commentary on our union board about the differences in cockpit culture between USA and some other countries, it is clear the difficulties with the visual approaches are the result of that very cockpit culture.
I read from a colleague in Japan, that visual approaches are not issued over there: rather, a visual approach is an FMC procedure that is required to be flown with remarkable precision - on the magenta line, that is. 1500AGL on downwind. Flaps must be at 15 and gear down at the midpoint. Flaps 30 when abeam the end, and clock is started. Base turn not started until 35 seconds on the clock. Do not descend below 1500 or the calculation changes. Turn trend indicator must align with the extended centerline. At that point, one can finally look outside and make adjustments.
Reading this stuff, it is no surprise then that these folks have a difficult time here in the US with, "Cleared for the visual, maintain 170 or greater to 5 miles, call tower at the marker, see ya."
It appears that the training there tends to focus more on automation, whereas here we are conditioned from day one to "fly the plane" with automation as a good backup. My personal opinion is that some of these foreign airlines are hiring very young/inexperienced cadets and believe that using the automation makes up for the inexperience... Whereas your typical US major airline candidate already has thousands of hours of airline/military/civilian flying.
That said, I must point out that, despite our training differences, we've had more than our share of pilot error botched approaches/landings/CFIT accidents even with all the experience and "hands-on" philosophy. Hence my constant signature line, It can happen to any of us!