World Briefing By Paul Ohia email:paulohia@thisdayonline.com Tel:08034483595, 02.14.2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
If you have abundant money in your account, you are qualified for a British, American or any other advanced country visa but they do their best to restrict people with criminal intentions from getting entry into their developed world.
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Other checks outside these requirements are done perfunctorily and may not matter in your being issued a visa.
However, an indigent person can also gain access into those countries but the person must have a scholarship from a reputable organisation, country or individual but must be ready to evacuate himself from the country upon finishing his studies. He may also be invited by an affluent person.
After 9/11, those countries also started monitoring people with terrorism inclinations and have been doing what they consider the best within their means to stop such elements from gaining entry through their borders.
The dilemma of having a fat is that terrorists normally have big bank accounts to back up their applications for visa.
There are people whose works require travels like journalists, development workers and religious clerics but they may not have fat bank accounts. For instance, whose salary may be on the starting point needs to travel as much as the editor who may have a bigger pay. He may even need to travel more than the government official with a diplomatic or official passport. I have had many complaints from these categories of workers that their careers have been stunted because of the requirement by some embassies that one must have large money moving in and out of their account and once this is not there the response would be that you do not have enough to sustain you in their country. It may embarrass you with an additional comment; that you may not return if you found yourself in their country.
On several occasions they are even assured that the company would foot the bill of the traveller or that some organisations would bear the cost, yet they deny access.
Sometime ago, an American organisation needed to build mud houses and had nobody with the knowledge of doing it in their country hence they had to research and find suitable people in the Eastern Nigeria. The locals were given invitation to travel to the US but were stopped at the embassy because they could not speak English and cannot produce evidence that they would not disappear in a country where they cannot speak their language.
The latest issue on this matter is the British student visa which has been abused by terrorists who infiltrate the country as students. It is meant to favour the bourgeoisie in the sense that they are able to get their off-springs attend the best colleges just like those listed as the Highly Trusted Sponsors.
In this European country, it has not been proven that those who come for short courses who may now be subjected to tougher visa regimes are among the perpetrators of economic or security crimes. In my own view, the whole issue of visa review in Britain is based on hype. So is the fantasy about fat bank accounts.
If Mr. Balogun, a brilliant banker, is not comfortable with poor power supply in Nigeria and has the mind to escape to leave a better life in the Diaspora, nothing stops him from presenting his fat statement of account as a bank manager and taking along his family members to UK to stay forever and add to the increasing population there. Yes this scenario happens very often. Often times, those who escape to those countries are normally people who should be comfortable here also. Some have the poetic feeling that living in Europe or the Americas gives them some superiority like ancient French people who returned from Greece speaking Latin in the medieval ages. Many of them pride themselves with speaking foreign accents and making fun of local idiolects as if foreign accents are not some sort of idiolects themselves.
The point I am struggling hard to make here is that despite the fact that countries have the right to grant access their territories by issuing visas, tying the issuing of visa to a persons monetary, or with property background is not the best policy.
Visa officers should consider other issues like the person’s commitment to his profession and emotional attachment to his home country. Apart from these, experts should be called in to give their suggestions on the matter so that people who should otherwise contribute to the advancement of humanity by a broader interaction with civilizations elsewhere are not sidelined to a particular part of the globe because it appears they may lack the resources required for a traveler.
