Playa del Car, Cancun, Mexico  —  Even some persons close to me enquire at times “Why don’t you get rid of that Guyana passport?  It’s proving such a hassle having it.” Hassle, indeed!  Over the years it seems wherever the passport is presented to immigration authorities, there is a problem, and sometimes brings the most inane questions:  “Where is that… in Ghana?”
One thing is almost sure for the traveller bearing a Guyana passport through foreign airports: fellow travellers will be ‘cleared’ by immigration and customs officers much more expeditiously than you would.
Some countries speak of having Guyana on a ‘black list’, and at the point of my entry, it tends always to be the case of: OK, let’s see who will win the mental and verbal tussle.
In Vienna, Austria, it seemed I spent an eternity in the office of the airport’s senior immigration officer who, quite obviously, had never seen a Guyana passport, nor ever heard of the place, and my own efforts at prevailing upon him came to naught.
Entry was permitted only after an official of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), on whose invitation I was visiting Austria, vouched about the validity of my documents and purpose of my visit.
In the tiny British possession of Anguilla in the northern Caribbean, almost 2,300 of which could fit into Guyana’s bulk, a Guyana passport ensured that I was the very last person from the flight to leave the airport, as I was told a visa was essential for entry.
However, the immigration officer hastened to assure that a visa could be obtained at the Immigration Headquarters in The Valley, the island’s capital city, on payment of $150.
Not willing to do that, was my response…“I wasn’t aware there was need of a visa, but the flight on which I arrived is still on the tarmac…I’ll be on it when it departs. It really doesn’t matter much if I don’t visit Anguilla. I was going to spend just a few days, anyhow”.
The officer showed me a document of ‘black-listed’ countries, with Guyana among them. So, I asked: How could Anguilla blacklist another English-speaking country within the same Caribbean group?
And he explained such instructions and regulations originate in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.  
Therefore, no visa, no entry…which gave me the chance to remind him of Anguilla’s history when in 1967 the administration of Ronald Webster kicked out Kittitian police and seceded the island from the federation of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla (all comprising a British colony), arguing against what he termed foreign domination by the then Robert Bradshaw administration on the island of St. Kitts.
(That crisis led to the invasion of Anguilla by British troops and prompted the classic remark by the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons that, obviously, the Prime Minister of England had finally found an opponent his own size).
My resistance to formal requirements was just too much for his level. By that time, the Arrivals Hall had cleared but for the two of us … no other passengers, no other officials… so he phoned the Chief Immigration Officer at headquarters and explained the problem. After a while, he handed me the phone, saying “The Chief wants to talk to you.”
The Chief said the officer would allow me in, point me to a taxi which would take me to headquarters where a visa would be issued, on payment of the fee. My response was that I preferred to leave, whereupon the Chief asked to speak again with the officer; following which, on hanging up the phone, the officer told me: “The Chief said to let you in.”
In another British possession, Bermuda, in the Atlantic Ocean just off the east coast of the U.S. Carolinas, a female immigration officer was immediately frosty when she saw the Guyana passport. The welcoming smile she had been giving to other passengers just disappeared.
I was attending a friend’s 65th birthday celebrations at the premises of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. My sister had travelled from London, we linked up in New York and flew together to Bermuda.
As a British citizen, she sailed through the arrival procedures. My passport was an issue for official anxiety, and in this case too I was the last man out.
The officer had many questions. I offered no answers, saying only once that “all the questions your government wished me to answer are on the immigration landing form, and I have answered all of them comprehensively. It is you who now have to decide whether you allow me in or not.”
(Evidently, Bermuda, within the same constitutional class as Anguilla, has the blacklist also).
Her face showed the displeasure she felt, and we just kept looking at each other, she seated at her desk, I standing a respectful two feet away from the desk. After what seemed an eternity, she stamped and signed the passport, returned it to me without a sound and I moved through… the last to do so from my flight.
Passport difficulties have been encountered also on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity cruise liners. In one case, out of Puerto Rico, when the ship’s boarding personnel insisted that the passport be surrendered until end of voyage, I prevailed in my insistence that the photo page be copied and passport returned immediately.
My contention was that the passport was the property of the Government of Guyana, with me as custodian, and I don’t surrender it anywhere. The issue went to the captain, who instructed that a copy be made of the photo page.
However, at a subsequent cruise, out of Long Beach, California, nationalism took a beating.
The ship’s boarding crew were unyielding. They insisted: If we cannot hold the passport, as the regulations require, you don’t cruise. It’s as simple as that. Next in line, please…
I retrieved the passport following the week-long trip, during which only the ship’s identification documents were required for disembarking and re-boarding at ports of call.
Total refusal to accept the Guyana passport has occurred only in Guatemala – for a simple day trip by bus across the border from Belize. It was the sole Guyana document among American passport holders, and the only one bluntly refused entry.
More recently, the greatest challenge came in the wake of charges against three Guyanese nationals – Russel de  Freitas, Abdul Kadir and Abdel Nur –  for involvement in a plot to blow up fuel depots at the JFK International Airport in New York.
Flying from Boston to New York is a not infrequent weekend activity for me – mostly to visit my Mother (now 101), sisters, other relatives, and friends.
Low-priced shuttling by American Airlines and Jet Blue Airline competes well, in both time and cost, with a bus ride by Peter Pan/Greyhound, Chinese and other services.
By air, it takes between 35 to 45 minutes; by bus, four to five hours. And the journey from JFK or La Guardia airports to the house is much shorter than from the Grand Central bus station in Manhattan, and even from Chinatown.
Following the JFK bombing plot, surveillance tightened around my Guyana passport. Check-in clerks, seeing the passport, would put a big red X on my boarding pass, which meant being taken into a cubicle at security, searched, patted down, with carry-on luggage opened and minutely checked, before being cleared through.
In time, the message came through that domestic air travel in the US with a Guyana passport as the required government-issued photo ID is just not the thing to do; for necessary security ministrations will always separate the holder out from the crowd, however inoffensive and innocent that holder be.
The solution was simplicity itself; but with the solution will come greater erosion of old nationalisms and increased assimilation into the adopted environment – in other words, a turning of the tide further away from ‘home’.
However, there are also other problems attendant on this ‘turning of the tide’ or of being caught in two streams; and the most recent example with the British is surely a classic.
Were I the holder of an American passport, I could have booked an AA ticket, gone to Boston’s Logan Airport and ‘flown’ to London’s Heathrow Airport to attend my sister’s 80th birthday celebrations…without encountering any difficulties at all.
But with the passport from a country evidently still on a ‘black list’, there is a process which has to be followed.
A 10-page application for an entry visa has to be filed with the Border Agency of the UK Home Office, through the British Consulate General in New York; the biometrics – photographing and fingerprinting – have to be done (in Boston in my case); and there must be what seems to me a considerable amount of supporting financial and other documentation. I first balked at providing all, because it seemed so intrusive into what might be thought to be private and personal matters.
I was also required to prove that my sister was my sister; that I would not be destitute in England and become reliant on the state; that it was I who was paying for a return air ticket; that resident relatives named on the application were not in the UK illegally; that I would not abscond at the end of the intended three-week visit. Also, as I had not set out a detailed programme of my daily activities during the visit, such absence of planning and preparation was contributory to the initial denial of an entry visa.
One has to say over and over again that times and things have really changed.
I have visited the United Kingdom and almost all of its territories in the Caribbean umpteen times, and never felt tempted to abscond.
I have been a guest of its government on a month-long, all-expenses tour of England and Wales.
I have sat in discussions with a group of members of the House of Lords and been one of their luncheon guests in the dining room of that House.
I have been a guest of the government in the Visitors’ Gallery during a debate in the House of Commons…and I was there for Sir Winston Churchill’s historic final appearance.
I have had a number of visits to the London Headquarters of Reuters News Agency, for discussions with management and senior editorial personnel.
I have several times had introductions to leading members of the British Royal Family, and once had the privilege of being among guests at a reception aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia.
On each of several visits to Europe and Africa, I have gone through London on both the outward and return journeys to spend quality time with relatives.
Far be it for me then, at this age and stage of my life, to not be able to afford a visit to the UK, or to want to abscond in that country.
But, as I have said, time and circumstances do change; and therefore so will security and other requirements.
Additionally, my experience should have told me that with a huge royal wedding in the offing, British officialdom would be especially security alert, so that anything – visa application or else – that does not seem to be going down absolutely according to the regulations would be negatived.
And so it is that anyone applying now with a Guyana passport for a short-term visitor’s visa out of Georgetown or New York, or wherever, and does not present sufficient supporting documentation which accords with the relevant sections of British immigration laws, “ENTRY DENIED” is the almost automatic response.
Obviously, to the entry clearance officer, every visa applicant is just another visa applicant – with no prior rights or privileges; and every Guyana passport holder who applies is a potential abscondee until the British authorities are satisfied not…  and it will be a very, very long time before the Cooperative Republic of Guyana reconstructs sufficiently (demographically, socially, politically… and morally) to change that perception. While a refusal is that government’s prerogative, it did not seem fair to me that for mere insufficiency of documentation a rejection notation should be placed in my passport, a further affront to the issuing government. But that is the nature of power.
Happily, a closed door for what the British might consider just and sufficient reason is not in every case a locked door, and the opportunity for immediate appeal is accorded the rejected applicant.
Thus it was that efforts were resumed, more detailed documentation provided; and my sister and other relatives will be delighted to see me at her 80th birthday celebrations at the Central London Golf Centre on March 26 (yesterday).
Ah, yes… I WILL be returning to Boston…  Won’t break my word and seek to stay in England… I’ll see the wedding of the year on US television.

QUOTE: Some countries speak of having Guyana on a ‘black list’, and at the point of my entry, it tends always to be the case of: OK, let’s see who will win the mental and verbal tussle.