Tuesday, July 13, 2010

EU and UK visa policy towards Ukrainians - 'go back to Russia!' (?)

The shameful treatment of Ukrainians by the Schengen and UK visa systems continues to hit new heights, with at least two more atrocious stories emerging this week.

The UK's Independent highlighted the rejections of visas for Ukrainian children who were due to spend a month away from the vicinity of Chernobyl. Whether these trips are healthwise still strictly necessary is open to question, but the point is that these summer trips have gone on for years without any problems. In just one example, only 7 out of 17 children due to spend part of the summer on the Isle of Wight were permitted to travel and, to make matters worse, they were in some cases informed only the night before travelling, with suitcases packed, that they would not be making the trip. The UK Border Agency tried to blame it on unsuitable host families in the UK, but the claims seem to be spurious.

Another case highlighted this week was of two PhD students bound for Italy who had their student visas rejected. There is an exhaustive list of similar cases, including the Ukrainian dance troupe which protested against their UK visa rejections by performing outside the British Embassy in Kiev. A folk festival in Bellingham had been deprived of the same pleasure. A recent article in the Kyiv Post highlighted an unfortunate Ukrainian student's extended stay in the departure lounge of Paris Charles de Gaulle airport due to the Icelandic volcano. The fact that he had friends in nearby Paris and was on a US student visa cut no ice with the French authorities despite clear evidence in favour of the applicant. Another case brought to my attention by my father was a group of Ukrainian steam train operators which was prevented from attending a gathering of railway preservationist organisations in Hungary. The gathering was part of the process of trying to bring Ukrainians round to creating the kind of railway preservation projects which have grown tourism in myriad places across the continent. Such developments are fairly alien in somewhere like Ukraine, but these are good examples of how visa rejections will serve to reinforce the status quo.

One not to be ignored result of this policy is the stress that it has caused to EU citizens in each case. With cases of a more personal nature this stress is amplified. In such cases the inviting party is treated as irrelevant to the matter in hand or even worse, de facto made out to be liars. These rejections are damaging business, cultural, educational, family and personal contacts of EU citizens. Don't we have rights too?

With the common thread here seeming to be the apparently arbitrary nature of many visa rejections, does it smack of conspiracy theories to begin to question whether there is a more sinister motive at work here? Are the EU and UK in fact telling Ukrainians in fairly blunt terms to 'go back to Russia'? The line has been drawn and, sorry, you're on the Moscow side. If this is not the message they wish to give out, they're not doing a very good job!

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Visa barrier to EU ineffective?

It is worth checking out these figures recently published by Reuters about illegal workers and remittances:

The remittances as percentage of GDP statistics are interesting from the point of view of countries which do and don't have visa free access to Western Europe. I am intrigued that the statistics for Ukraine don't look markedly different to those for Romania and Bulgaria, who of course have the free right to travel in the EU, but in theory not to work. That the percentage of GDP for remittances in Ukraine grew last year just as more Ukrainians returned home is simply evidence of how much the Ukrainian economy at home has shrunk. Many of the Romanians and Bulgarians working abroad went there years ago, when travel restrictions were still in place. Are we to understand that the reason the Ukrainian levels for 2007 and 2008 were similar to those for Romania and Bulgaria and not higher is the 'successful' barring of Ukrainians from travelling to the EU? The EU's restrictive visa policies frequently prevent Ukrainians from visiting friends, partners or taking holidays.
Are we to believe that, without these restrictions, they would be as high as they are for Albania, Bosnia or Serbia? This doesn't seem convincing to me. The latter three countries also had visa restrictions on them in the three preceding years, and two of them still do, and they still manage to travel and find this work despite this. So it seems that harder visa policies do very little to keep out those that want to work abroad illegally, and instead damage trade in business, tourism and the maintainance of family, friendship and personal relationships for both sides. 'Strong borders' might be a popular political move but, within Europe, they don't seem to make sense and they don't seem to be working. This needs to be looked at by the EU.

A simplified procedure, an 'innocent until proven guilty' policy and a more stringent procedure only for those that have previously overstayed visas seems to be the evident way forward. Or even better, visa free travel! It might not have the effect people imagine, and may in fact simply open the floodgates to increased tourism and personal contact. After all, if 30% of Albania's population is already abroad elsewhere in Europe, the Schengen floodgates are leaky to say the least!