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14th September 1997

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To get a visa at the American Embassy

Recently I had to go to the American Embassy to get Visa to attend some workshops that were being held in the United States. I was told by my travel agent that the Embassy was open for the issuing of Visas only three days of the week, and that also during certain allotted hours. So I picked a day and went at the recommended hour of six a.m. to take my place in the queue. There were at least thirty people ahead of me when I got there. It reminded me of the queues in private hospitals for appointments with specialist consultants. Are American Visa Officers also such a rare and precious breed that access to them should be so limited and thereby demand such queuing?

As nine o’clock approached I was getting tired of standing on the pavement, and I looked forward to the opening of the doors. But my anticipation of relief was in vain. Only about ten or fifteen people were being admitted to the premises at a time. Even though it was after nine in the morning the majority of the applicants were being asked to stand on the Municipal pavement while the visa applications were being processed in small batches. The reason for this became evident when I finally managed to progress from the CMC maintained waiting area to the waiting area for Visa applicants in the Embassy. It was a cramped little room with too little oxygen and too few chairs. Suddenly I began to miss the spacious pavement.

I will not go into details here about the uncalled for rudeness of the Embassy staff, and the juvenile attempts at psychological interrogation traps by the visa officer whom I had the displeasure of meeting. But eventually my visa was approved and a whole half a day was wasted. But there was more. Those whose visas were approved are told to return between half past four and five p.m. to collect their passports. Upon arriving at half past four, they must once again take their place on the pavement and proceed to wait indefinitely. When the disbursing counter feels the queue is suitably long, it opens, hands out the passports to those in the queue and promptly closes for the day - never mind if it is before five p.m. Therefore those who are not willing to service these frail egos by queuing up like hungry orphans on the pavement, must pay the penalty and return the next day. I returned the next day. My estimate is that the American Embassy occupies about a 100 perches of the most prime land in our country. And yet we, its ordinary citizens, are told to stand on the Municipal pavement and are then cooped in to a stuffy room and treated with such impudent indignity. Is this how the American Visa office behaves in other countries as well?

I spent four wonderful years in the US, completing my university education and there is much that I have come to appreciate about America and Americans. The bureaucratic officers that I encountered in the US were never rude and hostile in the way that they are here. All the Sri Lankans that I know who are residing in the US not only make very useful contributions to the American Economy, but do so legally, by obtaining work permits and green cards that are proffered to them by the US government. So why this wretched treatment when we are in Sri Lanka? Why the schizophrenia between the bureaucracy there and the bureaucracy here? The worst human instincts of abusing position and privilege seem to have been brought to the fore in this petty bureaucracy. Is it because of the politics of relative power in the context of relative poverty? Or the cumulative prejudices of colour and geography?

But racial and class prejudice come not only from outside, it’s amongst us as well. So perhaps, we shouldn’t be too outraged. Don’t we, also stereo type, the Muslims the Tamils and the Sinhalese, and find reasons to treat "them" with contempt or suspicion? Don’t we, treat the poor, who knock on our doors, very differently from the rich? Don’t we, have clubs, with VIP lounges, fawning ‘for foreigners only’ ?

Every time our mind conceives of others as "them" as opposed to "us" we begin the process of harming them through stereo typing and prejudice. We refuse to offer "them" jobs - "they speak broken English and therefore must be less intelligent". We exclude "them" from our social circles - "they are too poor to be counted as equally human". We don’t want "them" marrying into our family - "they can’t fit in to our culture, they’re inferior ". We refuse to rent "them" our houses - "they are Tamil and therefore must be terrorists ". It is easy to be indignant when we are the victims of prejudice, racism and stereo typing; but aren’t we, in our turn, constantly victimising others? "What a wretched man I am" laments the Apostle Paul in one of his Epistles in the Bible. "Who will rescue me...(who will help me change)?"

We must ask for change. But we must also change. We need to change together.

- Nishan de Mel


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