It sucks for Namibia, but I think it’s logical since there are probably way more people in Namibia wanting to visit Canada than people in Canada wanting to visit Namibia.
I remember a story from many years ago where an Indian coworker was complaining that his parents tourist visa to the US got denied again. I thought this was really unjust and I was commiserating with him about why the US would even care. He said “because people come over on a tourist visa from India and never leave.” I said that was ridiculous because it’s limiting tourism and he said “No, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. They’re 75 so they’ll just stay here the rest of their lives. Customs will never actually do anything.”
I think of that every time I read stories like this.
Fun fact, entering legally with a valid visa and then overstaying is much more common than an actual illegal border crossing, and doing so is a "civil violation", less than a felony or misdemeanor, and more on the level of a parking ticket.
Definitely. It’s super common. It’s not really sought out either. I understand the penalty is basically “you won’t be ever to come back” and they really only find you if you try to travel internationally or get picked up for something else.
This is how my coworker/friend described it. And why part of why State department makes visas harder for some countries. They know people never leave, they just don’t care. So they can easily see with which countries this is most common.
If your coworker was a US citizen he could just get his parents green cards.
I'm assuming the reason he's not a citizen yet is because the employment green card queue for India is ridiculously backlogged compared to every other country.
I visited Namibia last year, am in Canada today, and do not share your assessment. Not at all.
I have only positive experiences of both countries. But if you all how many people from X will want to visit Y, my guess is that more Canadians visit Namibia then the other way around, by a large factor, and a bit of extra bureaucracy won't be worse than the overnight flight anyway.
To clarify, Namibia seems beautiful and is a great country. I just meant that the demand levels are different and that the wealth levels are very different between the two countries.
I’d love to visit Namibia. And I expect western tourists to Namibia spend quite a bit more there than Namibian tourists in the West.
There are a number of other languages which are the native languages of most of the population, but English is the only official language of the country. When I was there as a tourist they told me that it was chosen after independence because it would be equally difficult to learn for every ethnic group.
I have successfully managed (once and hopefully again) a Canadian visa application, for a Vietnamese family member (tourism).
It was slightly longer than my thesis, although much shorter to complete -- unless you include failed previous attempts. To date, it remains my magnum opus of bureaucratic compliance.
It's a frustrating and moderately expensive experience, that I would otherwise never have learned about as a Canadian citizen.
Meanwhile, a visa to enter Vietnam for 3 months from a Western nation is a fee and a rubber stamp. A fascinating problem arising from that is the number of undocumented migrant workers we get from the West! It's been a thing for a decade, but in the past was mainly people offering English lessons who did not meet the requirements for a work permit. It's expanded significantly in scope post-Covid, although I don't have any hard numbers to share.
I feel it's quite fair to expect some visa costs/paperwork when no fair and bilateral visa arrangement exists. On the other hand, the level of noncompliance with the terms of the issued visas worries me. I'm a documented immigrant to Vietnam, I run a small and boring company. If the rules change in a crackdown, will I get caught up in a regulatory net meant to catch someone else? Losing my company this way would be really disheartening.
I'm unable to think of an easy fix to the asymmetrical unfairness of visas -- but I thought you might enjoy a slice of what it looks like from the other side. I guess immigrants anywhere are presented with many of the same challenges.
A friend had to change the plane in Canada to travel from Europe to South America. He couldn’t attend the journey because he didn’t get a visa for Canada solely to take an onward flight.
FYI, the same applies to the US. There is no transit-side to international airports; you must do immigration after arrival even if you will not be leaving the airport.
Right or wrong, fair or not, these hurdles are in place because of economic migration.
People want to move to richer countries where even menial jobs pay much much more than their home countries, and they can enjoy more advanced infrastructure that's been built up over generations. Quite often money is then sent 'back home'.
People moving the other way (west to developing nation) often bring skills or plenty of savings with them. That's not always true in both cases of course (plenty of skilled doctors want to move to the west, plenty of unemployed drunks from the west want to move somewhere cheaper, etc).
In this case, already having some family living in the country must be a red flag that the applicant might easily find a job and a support network and then petition to stay.
The whole thing sucks and is unfair, but there it is. One day hopefully we will not need national borders, but it is not this day.
I had to get a work visa for Brazil at one point. There was a fee breakdown, and all the fees added up to about $85, except a "reciprocity fee" which was an additional $55. I was curious, so I asked about it. It turns out that America charged Brazilians $140 for the visa application, so Brazil added that fee so that the total that Brazil charged American applicants was the same.
Interesting to note that Namibia was one of the few German colonies. So, you would expect there to be a bit more of a functional relationship when it comes to visas between the two countries.
Anyway, requiring a visa on entry is pretty normal. And since they hand them out on arrival, it's more of a tax than a bureaucratic hurdle. I remember having to pay for a visa when entering Turkey in the late nineties. You had to pay cash to get a stamp in your passport. Just a formality. They had very high inflation at the time (higher than now) and you had to pay in your own currency instead of Turkish Lira. Dutch Guilders in my case (this was pre-euro) So, this was a nice way to get foreign currency into the country for them. Clearly it was about the money and not about Dutch people outstaying their welcome in Turkey.
Likewise, Namibia doesn't have an immigration problem but they can probably use the cash.
> you would expect there to be a bit more of a functional relationship
Why?
Between 1904 and 1908, German troops waged a punitive campaign against the Herero and Nama which escalated into the first genocide of the 20th century.
Addendum: In response to rapid up and downvoting with no comment as to why I'll happily repeat the question .. why should we expect good relations between former European colonies and their European colonisers?
Germany had a colony in PNG in the early 1900s, that's long since changed hands. Belgium had a horrorshow occupation of the Congo region under Leopold that served no good end. Idi Amin, a brutal dictator, expelled Europeans and the Indian civil servants brought in by the British to oversee colonial works in Uganada.
Yes, sometimes there are good relations between former colonies and the countries that took them over .. but it doesn't always follow.
I think to an extent the violence the Europeans inflicted weren't that much different that the violence neighboring groups did. For much of history you had local empires that exploited and oppressed tribal and ethnic groups.
But it's interesting I saw a survey that showed people in former colonies often have a better opinion of the former colonizing county than they do of non.
There's an argument made that "our" (western) history of civil conflict in Africa and elsewhere is the only | principle written english history of such neighbouring violence and largely omits the actions of European actors in playing "divide and conquer" as part of the colonial playbook.
The role of France in the Rwandan Genocide was underplayed at the time and still relatively undiscussed.
The role of the US and France in extracting very high grade uranium from the Congo during the Cold War was almost unreported until well after and surrounded by a halo of funded conflict and destabilising warlords that prevented any local governance arising to challenge the relocation of valuable resources.
The British Kenyan Colony, now dissolved, was defended from the Mau Mau uprising against the British by stoking neighbouring conflicts and arming at below cost groups that would act in the interest of Britain.
A consistent story in colonies is that the violence Colonisers directly inflicted was very often the least part of the violence they initiated in a delibrate strategy of destabilisation.
>“[The UK] unfortunately imposed a visa regime on Namibia last year due to the number of asylum seekers we were receiving.
We have a problem in the UK and other countries that the cost of that has become so high. From another article:
>The Home Office claims that the average cost per night of providing hotel accommodation to asylum seekers is £140, which does not include the costs to local services. It says that the estimated total cost to the taxpayer over five years would far exceed £150,000 per asylum seeker.
There must be a better way to do things. I mean like let them apply online if they really need asylum, otherwise send them back. The legal system seems to have run amok that any rando can say I claim asylum and then be pretty much unremovable at a huge cost to the local tax payers.
Tables always turn but this is a tax. Many countries are realizing that Westerners (or people from countries with high cost of living) are taking advantage of the differential in living costs; and of course these governments wants to dip in the arbitrage. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if some SEA countries implement visa processes in the short-medium term future. The number of people from US/EU I have seen/met in SEA in the last year (Thailand and Vietnam) who were looking for local jobs and working illegally was alarming.
> From next April, Canadian nationals, along with those from Germany, the US, the UK and 29 other countries, will require a visa for entry.
> These include all “non-reciprocating countries” - meaning the new visa rules will affect citizens from all countries that require Namibian passport holders to have visas.
I’m curious what this is meant to achieve. There is zero chance those western countries would be open to Visa free travel to Namibia. It’d be political suicide with the latest right wing wave and no one cares about the Skeleton coast and deserts of Namibia enough to apply any pressure.
Is this policy just for domestic consumption or a cash grab?
Oh don’t get me wrong, Namibia is relatively safe, beautiful, and the people are wonderful so it’s great place to visit especially if you follow the Okavango into Botswana at the same time.
I don’t know, I think we should have started detaining US citizens for 20 minutes in Australia to reciprocate the delays caused by Trump era USA interview requirements. For reference, before boarding a plane to the USA you had to queue up to answer a bunch of dumb questions “what is your golf handicap” was one I got. Fortunately that ridiculous process stopped.
There is something to having a degree of quid pro quo and not just being a stepping stone to more powerful nations.
That’s a reasonable question for immigration, especially if they think you might try to work illegally (which, as a native English speaker, you could do easily). Canada can be quite hard on Americans for this, and we even have a special arrangement where the eSTAs and eTAs don’t apply between us for US and Canadian citizens. We have nearly complete freedom of movement.
My wife is usually quiet when we do immigration because I carry the passports and know the process (a bit silly, since she’s been through it almost as many times as I, but they need to be in one place and I carry that bag), but at the land border I’ve had to wake her up to get her to talk. She asked why one time. I said, you have a US passport, we have different last names, they have to make sure I’m not a human trafficker with a fake passport for you.
Then she got Global Entry and that issue went away. They know both of us.
Nope I said I was going to California for a job interview, the golf thing just came up as they peppered me with questions about what I like to do on the weekend.
They're probably looking for a breaking facade reaction rather than any specific right or wrong answer.
There's a school of thought that thinks such approaches to questioning works, another that thinks it doesn't - but in general border agents look more for body language and reactions rather than correct answers to trivia questions.
Some say the best way to be forgotton | passed through | overlooked by aircrew and border agents is to rapidly get "bucketed" into a category group .. too many drinks and make a loud pass at staff, for example, and you're in the "drunken bore" group.
Right-wing wave? There are full open-immigration supporters, but I would put most of them to the left of Lenin.
Nationalism is not always and everywhere insane, especially in a democracy where demography is destiny. If your country doesn’t have a strong assimilation system, being very protective of borders is a good idea.
The fee is probably only for countries which want a visa from them, I guess Africans can travel visa free to Namibia. The western countries can pay 90 bucks.
I remember a story from many years ago where an Indian coworker was complaining that his parents tourist visa to the US got denied again. I thought this was really unjust and I was commiserating with him about why the US would even care. He said “because people come over on a tourist visa from India and never leave.” I said that was ridiculous because it’s limiting tourism and he said “No, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. They’re 75 so they’ll just stay here the rest of their lives. Customs will never actually do anything.”
I think of that every time I read stories like this.