Showing posts with label passports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label passports. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Preferential Passports

My nephew, Boo has an American passport. So does every kid born in the US I guess. Last night we were out for dinner with some of our relatives. Of the 4 of them, 2 had Australian passports one, an American one and one an Indian one. They were describing how there was minimal scrutiny for the 3 'foreign' passports as opposed to the one Indian one. This is not surprising. I must thank my stars for having been pretty fortunate in obtaining whatever visas I've wanted though my 25 years of travelling. However I know of so many people who've not had as much luck, who've had a variety of visas rejected for seemingly no reason at all. First, I find it preposterous that holders of a certain passport require visas for certain countries as opposed to others. Like if you hold an American passport you probably don't need visas for short stays for a hundred countries that I would. The world's immigration rules have got to be the same for people across all countries. Who's to say that the "privileged" ones aren't there to stay for a variety of reasons. (I write this, assuming that most countries fear that they will be immigrated into on a permanent basis by the person entering their country). I could be wrong. There could be a lot more funda behind this than I could possibly know. However, I just don't see how being "born" in a country and thus bestowed that passport exonerates you from possible illegalities/or whatever it is that is of concern. Shouldn't the rules be same for one and all? I am not suggesting that everyone sit and increase the administrative paperwork by ensuring that everyone else gets a visa etc for everything. Like the European union has a pretty cool concept of the Schengen visa which means that with a visa to any one of the countries under the Schengen treaty, you are welcome to enter and leave any other country under the treaty. There has to be some umbrella like this for other countries as well, which makes it easier. But it does irk me that the American junta for instance can override any Schengen requirement and are free to enter anyways. Why preferential treatment? Because these are the so-called "developed nations"? So what if our country is "developing"? In what administrative way does it make us less reliable or less-trustworthy? In fact I suppose their fear is that educated as us lot is from these countries we are likely to "stay" in theirs for the "opportunites" perceived there. I fail to see the whole point, I guess. If there's something that I am entirely missing, someone illuminate me.

Does anyone else have any opinions on this? Let's talk about it.