LONG ago, I wondered about the irrational policy of China and India requiring Guyanese to have a visa to visit.
There are things in life that makes no sense. The official philosopher of the Holy Roman Empire, St. Aquinas, once wrote that everything in life has a meaning. I disagree. China and India requiring Guyanese to have a visa makes no sense.
No Guyanese reeling from extreme poverty in their personal life will have money to buy a ticket to travel to China and India. But if someone buys a ticket for them, they won’t go.
How are they going to survive in China or India? That is mission impossible. Not one single Guyanese will live illegally in China or India and they will not survive because it would be impossible for them to find employment. I would give anything to hear the explanation from the immigration ministers from those two countries why they have a visa policy for Guyana.
It is the same with the EU. There are two countries in the EU that speak English – Malta and Ireland. The other 25 countries have their own languages. Why would Guyanese seek illegal harbour in those 25 countries? It makes no sense when every Guyanese has at least a relative and in a majority of cases more than one, in the US, the UK, Canada and the CARICOM region.
The Schengen visa requirement, as with China and India, makes no sense. But there is more atrocity to come. There is a visa criterion by the EU for Guyana but you can only get the document from the Dutch embassy in Suriname and the Germany embassy in Trinidad.
Strangely and atrociously, there is a French embassy in Guyana that only offers Schengen visa to Guyanese for French visits only. This is bewildering.
There is no longer an Italian visa or a Germany visa. There is a Schengen visa. How then France offers the Schengen visa for France only? President Ali lamented this unacceptable state of affairs when addressing a Caribbean tourism conference here two days ago.
His words were strong. He told the gathering: “The European Union is still backward in this region. You have to travel to Suriname and Trinidad to get biometrics to do it. In a day of digitisation and AI (Artificial Intelligence), we have the EU that is operating from a Stone Age kind of operation and they’re our friends; we can tell them frankly.”
This is where the opposition in this country fails the people that voted for them. There are 28 opposition parliamentarians with a combined vote of 189,000 in the last general election. The parliamentary leader for APNU is a businessman, Terrence Campbell, who has been described by Ravi Dev as a billionaire.
Is Mr. Campbell comfortable with staying four days in Suriname to get his Schengen visa? Mr. Campbell has to know that hundreds of business people he knows in Guyana have to spend the same four days either in Suriname or Trinidad.
Why should it be left to the Government of Guyana only to make representation to the US about the Schengen visa asininity? Is the French Embassy lying to the Guyanese people? If the Dutch embassy in Suriname and the German mission in Trinidad can offer the visa which permits travel throughout the EU why can’t the French embassy do the same?
According to the French embassy here, the EU has to permit the French embassy to make the visa general but France has to ask for that permit. So why hasn’t the French Government asked for it? And if it did, why is it taking so long?
My opinion is that I think the French haven’t. But the very fact that the French have opened an embassy here means that it accepts that Guyana is a major player in the developing world. So why do Guyanese have to go to Suriname and Trinidad to get a Schengen visa?
My position as a public intellectual in this country is that the EU should abolish visa requirement for Guyanese because it lacks commonsense.
The only persons in Guyana that will visit EU countries are businessmen and they would be happy to return to Guyana because they can more make a dollar in their own country than in any of the old, dilapidated economies of the EU.
How much has changed in the relation between our former imperial colonisers and the post-colonial world? Their business delegations can hop on a plane and come to Guyana.
Guyanese businessmen going to EU countries have to sweat it out for four days in Suriname or Trinidad to get a Schengen visa. I am going to shock you when you read the last line here. Times like these, I miss President Forbes Burnham.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
