Monday 19 July 2010

Visas...

Visa application forms. Oh how I love them. Not.

I seriously think visas are just some form of protectionism - people pay money for their application, only to find out they applied too late / didn't have the right supporting documents / can't afford to travel because of the application fees. We probably won't get back the application fees, and they avoid having us people in their country.

This is one form of bureaucracy that has dogged me whenever I want to travel. And it's not like the process is one that makes you feel welcomed in the country you plan to visit, either - you must submit a straight-faced photo of yourself, give them your biometric prints, and miss work/leisure time to wait a lot in a grim embassy office/building (often an office in an apartment, because they're too cheap to make a respectable building), before you can actually show the embassy staff your application form, only to be let known if you passed or failed the "visa acid test".

Nowadays, of course, you can fill in your application form online. But don't be fooled. The process is still not futuristic - you have to search for a PDF file in a website that probably looked modern in the Netscape days, and you have to print the PDF on paper - so much for environmental awareness. Then, you have to remember to bring the printed forms to the embassy. Forget that, even if it's a single page, and you're in deep trouble.

Oh, did I mention you have to book an appointment? Most often, the embassy opens in the most unhappy hours - my appointment with the US embassy, for example, is 7.30AM. And because I live in the North of Jakarta, while the embassy is in the central/South area, I'd have to try and beat the jams. Otherwise, I'd have to come back another day.

Embassies' consular services seem to open for 4 hours a day - 8am to 12am for the UK Visa application centre in Jakarta. I've been wondering why it's only open for such short hours, and why only in the morning, aside from security reasons. I don't know if the postal system have anything to do with the short opening hours, or maybe it's laziness, but who cares - I find it bloody annoying. If they open for more hours (I'm staring at the US embassy folks here), maybe they can serve more people in a day and have less of an appointment backlog that goes into the next century. Oh, maybe hire more staff as well? I know the US is trying to cut their budgets (well, not really, are they?) but I suspect the cost of taking on more staff will be less than the benefit of having more tourists and visitors enter your country.

The whole visa application process kind-of makes you feel second-rate. I understand they do certain things for certain reasons - the funding test is to see if we'll be milking from their benefits system, when we shouldn't be. The biometric scans and photo go into their databases for criminal investigation purposes - I'd want the authorities in the country I'm visiting to know who I am and where to send me if I were to end up in an accident. But sometimes, I wish the process was a bit more human and a bit less bureaucratic.

Oh, by the way, stop asking questions like "Have you done anything that may not characterise you as a person of good nature?". Who, in their right mind, would say "YES I AM A MENACE NOW GIVE ME MY VISA"? (That's not shouting, that's block letters - forms must be filled in in block letters, right?) I mean, come on, I seriously think the IQ level of terrorists are way higher than the person who though up this question. Maybe it's a cold or sleep deprivation that caused that question to go through, but can we not have such things?

On second thought, keep that question there. It certainly brightened my day/night when I read that question, thinking "LOL what if I said YES for eating meat from animals?". All sorts of scenarios of behaviours that may be perceived as 'bad' pop up in my head - stepping on ants, stealing the moon, taking candy from a baby, kiasuism, irrtating people, being lazy, etc. What if someone repents their sins in a visa application form and answered "Yes"? What would the immigration staff do?

Oh darn, maybe I should have answered "Yes"!

Heck. It's just bureaucracy.

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