Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, I reflect on the increasing difficulty of travel and immigration for many from the African continent, and how one country is plotting a smoother path.
Parallel experiences of travel
I have just come back from holiday, and I’m still not used to how different travel is when not using an African passport. My British citizenship, which I acquired about five years ago, has transformed not only my ability to travel at short notice but it has eliminated overnight the intense stress and bureaucratic hurdles involved in applying for visas on my Sudanese passport.
It is difficult to explain just how different the lives of those with “powerful” passports are to those without. It is an entirely parallel existence. Gaining permission to travel to many destinations is often a lengthy, expensive and sickeningly uncertain process. A tourist visa to the UK can cost up to £1,000, in addition to the fee for private processing centres that handle much of Europe’s visa applications abroad. And then there is the paperwork: bank statements, employment letters, academic records, certified proof of ownership of assets, and birth and marriage certificates if one is travelling to visit family. This is a non-exhaustive list. For a recent visa application for a family member, I submitted 32 documents.
It may sound dramatic but such processes instil a sort of low-level trauma, after submitting to the violation of what feels like a bureaucratic cavity search. And all fees, whatever the decision, are non-refundable. Processing times are in the hands of the visa gods – it once took more than six months for me to receive a US visa. By the time it arrived, the meeting I needed to attend for work had passed by a comically long time.
Separation and severed relationships
It’s not only travel for work or holiday that is hindered by such high barriers to entry. Relationships suffer. It is simply a feature of the world now that many families in the Black diaspora sprawl across continents. Last month Trump restricted entry to the US to nationals from 20 countries, half of which are in Africa. The decision is even crueler when you consider that it applies to countries such as Sudan, whose civil war has prompted many to seek refuge with family abroad.
That is not just a political act of limiting immigration, it is a deeply personal one that severs connections between families, friends and partners. Family members of refugees from those countries have also been banned, so they can’t visit relatives who have already managed to emigrate. The International Rescue Committee warned the decision could have “far-reaching impacts on the lives of many American families, including refugees, asylees and green card holders, seeking to be reunified with their loved ones”.
A global raising of barriers
The fallout of this Trump order is colossal. There are students who are unable to graduate. Spouses unable to join their partners. Children separated from their parents. It’s a severe policy, but shades of it exist elsewhere by other means. The UK recently terminated the rights of foreign care workers and most international students to bring their children and partners to the country. And even for those who simply want to have their family visit them, access is closed to all except those who can clear the high financial hurdles and meet the significant burdens of proof to show that either they can afford to maintain their visitors or that they will return to their home countries.
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It was 10 years before I – someone with fairly stable employment and a higher-education qualification – satisfied the Home Office’s requirements and could finally invite my mother to visit. I broke down when I saw her face at arrivals, realising how hard it had been for both of us; the fact that she had not seen the life I had built as an adult. Compare this draconian measure to some countries in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, that have an actual visa category, low-cost and swiftly processed, for parental visits and residency.
A new African model
But as some countries shut down, others are opening up. This month, Kenya removed visa requirements for almost all African citizens wanting to visit. Here, finally, there is the sort of regional solidarity that mirrors that of the EU and other western countries.
Since it boosts African tourism and makes Kenya an inviting destination for people to gather at short notice for professional or festive reasons, it’s a smart move. But it also sends an important signal to a continent embattled by visa restrictions and divided across borders set by colonial rule.
We are not just liabilities, people to be judged on how many resources they might take from a country once allowed in. We are also tourists, friends, relatives, entrepreneurs and, above all, Africans who have the right to meet and mingle without the terror, and yes, contempt, of a suspicious visa process. If the African diaspora is being separated abroad, there is at least now a path to the option that some of us may reunite at home.