A Canadian ghost haunts the US Embassy in Guyana
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
April 26, 2007
If Martin Gough (one of the BBC's sports journalists that covered the Guyana matches for CWC) had written that a huge percentage of Guyanese do not want to stay in their country, I would never have issued a reply to him. It simply boggles the mind to see the type of people that do not want to live in Guyana anymore.
Some people who are getting on in age, and who have reasonably satisfactory jobs, want to depart and many of such have migrated. These people's prospects of having a good-paying occupation at that age that will enable them to have a comfortable future is not guaranteed in North America.
The migration craze is in full swing and Guyanese of all types of classes are leaving. The shocking news coming out of the UN and reported in this newspaper yesterday is that in forty years time, Guyana's population will decrease by about 40 percent. Just think about it; in 2050, we will just have 400,000 persons in this land. It will be one of the most under populated countries in the entire world when you consider Guyana's land mass.
The UN statistics should not have surprised us. There cannot be a country with such a huge exodus of citizens that expects to survive in the future. The haemorrhage is too massive for such a country to have a sustained future. When people cannot leave legally, they conjure up the most ingeniously, unorthodox devices to get out of this territory. There can be no question about it; Guyana is reliving the seventies and eighties in identical fashion.
When you read about the announcement by the US Embassy in Georgetown that it will no longer accept any form of documentation for a visitor's visa except the application form, then the US Embassy is actually saying that there is going to be a drastic reduction in the number of visas granted.
How could this have happened when 25 years ago, the same manipulation by Guyanese applicants occurred at the Canadian High Commission? The rampage was so intensive that it sapped the mental energy of the Canadian staff. The deluge of bogus documents was so tempestuous that the Canadians were forced to close its consular service. Guyanese had to send their documents to Port-of-Spain.
One of the factors that pushed the Canadians to such a decision was the level of corruption that had surrounded the visa process.
A visa was easily available for sex. Two consular officers became wild given the easy access to money and sex. At their court case in Canada after they were charged, evidence came out that there was a group sex house in South Ruimveldt. If an applicant wanted a visa, then she had to participate in group sex.
At the trial, a Guyanese by the name of P. Boyce was named as the person who organised sex sessions for the Canadian consular officers. There was a sickening dimension to this perversity in the eighties. Daughter married father, father married sister, brother married sister, sister married cousin, just to get a visa. Most of the perpetrators were East Indians (about 98%).
After Guyana regained electoral democracy in 1992, the Canadians didn't even think for a second about returning. It never crossed their minds. The Canadians are through with offering visa services at their High Commission. After 15 years of electoral democracy in Guyana, the Canadians are still operating from Trinidad. Now, after what happened at the US Embassy recently, the Canadians must be rejoicing that they didn't return.
The Americans have said that they are inundated with bogus birth certificates, fictitious marriage papers, tampered transports and fraudulent business documents.
The Embassy then reached the breaking point just as the Canadians did in the eighties. They made a draconian response. The US Embassy will now judge a person who wants a non-immigrant visa simply on what is written on the form and how the person answers the questions put to him or her.
Peeping Tom in a column recently urged Guyanese to speak out against this unreasonable decision by the US Embassy. Sometimes the persons who write those columns can be both entertaining and irritating. Why should people speak out and fear that they may be denied a visa for so doing?
Peeping Tom will get his visa because the consular officer doesn't know who wrote that column. Guyanese commentators are afraid to contradict the US Embassy here because they fear victimisation.
I don't know if the Embassy will react adversely to criticism but I know sometimes they do. A senior consular officer was incensed that I did a column disagreeing with the denial of visas to nine small children who were going with their teachers from School of the Nation to Puerto Rico. That officer was really mad at me. I though Americans believed in free expression but that US citizen at the US Embassy wasn't one of them.
I hope readers remember this column whenever they debate the respect for the right to disagree—a right that the Americans so fiercely embrace.
I support the US Embassy's position to refuse to accept supporting documents. I honestly believe it will greatly reduce people's chances of getting a visa but I accept this position because it stops a process of continuing immorality that is prevalent in Berbice.
I knew a guy in Barr Street, Kitty that was fanatically pro-PPP. He has been like this for all his sixty years. Then last week his papers came through and he left for the US. Yes, at age 60. This man is immoral. He has nothing in his character. If Guyana was so good under the PPP, then why has he left to become an unemployed soul in New York?
The people who will be affected by the new policy at the US Embassy will be those hypocritical Berbicians. I would gladly buy the gift of his/her choice for the person that made that decision at the US Embassy. Let those Berbicians who voted for the PPP stay in Guyana and help the PPP develop their country. Why do you want to saddle us with the PPP while you want to leave? Stay your derriere in Berbice.