As more and more young South Asians are saving up and broadening their travel horizons, inflexible budgets, long immigration queues and weak passports are not the only hurdles complicating their mobility. Exhausting, humiliating and sometimes travel-hostile visa regimes, loaded with a tinge of global-north sanctimony (Europe, I am talking about you) restrict South Asians to a handful of countries.
While security concerns and socio-political complexities are understandable, rigorous and travel-hostile visa policies create an unparalleled sense of humiliation.
Such humiliation is manifest in the exhausting afternoon murmurs outside foreign embassies, consulates and biometric centers in my home country, India. It’s a sad sight to witness – a circus of clean-shaven men and well-dressed wives waiting for their interviews outside the doors, hoping for a rare one-time opportunity to dazzle and display their best fashion, manners and old-world antics:
“Namaste, I am a law-abiding citizen…”
“Salam Alaykum, I am a Muslim, but not the terrorist kind…”
“Hello, I speak good English and my kid speaks good English too…”
This, cocktailed with blind faith and fear of refusal, has also spawned a new kind of devotion. For a deeply faith-oriented country like India, where places of worship often become political props, it also offers a unique set of ‘visa temples’.
One such place is the Chilkur Balaji Temple in Hyderabad, which has a unique cult of millions of visa worshippers, asking to get one step closer to their “American dream”.
Sophisticated apartheid: Of documents and stringency
Numerous factors dictate and shape strict visa divides.
Factors such as national economy, per capita income, proof of strong home ties, the intent of return and a long list of supporting documents – confirmed return flight tickets, hotel bookings, bank statements, tax returns, travel insurance, salary slips, no objection certificates and employment letters – stultify visa processes by burdening travellers with disproportionate documentation.
Some visa agents have also advised sharing pet ownership proofs to demonstrate strong home ties.
Stringent documentation in South Asian countries, at times, is an exhausting prerequisite, given a culture of bureaucratic red tape, systemic inefficiencies, delays and corruption, and lastly, a quintessential South Asian habit of non-documentation, where proofs and facts are stored more in stories, oral heritage and word-of-mouth, than in formal and foolproof documentations.
While national security, health hazards and country-specific complexities indeed necessitate some stringent measures, denial of short-term tourist visas with the prior assumption of misuse creates a new kind of apartheid, which allows only a chosen few to travel, while exposing the ‘others’ to humiliating checks and scrutiny.
Such stringency also discourages genuine travellers from even applying for a travel visa, therefore posing threats to the global travel economy.
Who profits?
A LAGO Collective study reveals that the European Union profits around €130 million per year through rejected visa applications, with African and Asian countries bearing the cost of paying for their own rejection.
India alone paid €12,150,000 in 2023 in rejected short-term Schengen visa applications – the third highest cost of rejections following Turkey and Algeria.
Pakistan, with a rejection rate of 49.54%, lost €3,344,640 on a short-term Schengen visa, while Bangladesh, lost €1,362,160 (43.33%), Nepal (35.97%) and Sri Lanka (38.39%) lost around €234,560 and €746,640 in 2023, respectively.
For a short-term U.K. visa, the results are equally disheartening, with Asian and African countries paying a disproportionately high cost over rejections.
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With exorbitant and non-refundable visa appointment fees, such a strict visa regime affects an ecosystem of ‘reverse remittances’ at its dullest, where travellers from the global south are made to pay for their travel aspirations.
At its brightest, this is silent and persistent colonisation that weaponises visas to continue feeding on the former colonies, which honestly have not much left to be fed upon.
A word for mobility
To rage about passport privilege in the global south may sometimes seem a bit vain when one could talk about homelessness, farmers’ suicides, or perhaps the futility of bullet trains in a country with potholed roads.
However, we must remember that travelling is not merely the act of moving across places to do some soul-searching yoga in Bali or finding a billionaire lover in Tokyo.
In a world united by hatred, geo-political tensions, and nativism and protectionism, travelling talks about convergences and similarities. It is about easing, if not erasing border controls and about diffusing senseless political tensions and sharp prejudices, all without needing the burden of formal apparatuses.
On a lighter note, travelling also exposes us to our quirky differences – to burp or not to burp, to tip or not to tip – and yet cultivates love for our shared curiosity about the ‘other’ who might not be an ‘other’ after all.
Sachin Solanki is a writer.
