NRI VISA woes or lack of communication?

Written by Pallavi Chibber, investment expert from NRImatters.com. Each week Pallavi will be posting premium content exclusively for NetIP.

The Visa always has been a distant ghost that scares most of us, especially those who are now the residents of other countries.

One such example came to light to me personally while I was organizing the trip to India for the winners of NRI Power Podium to attend Pravasi Bharaiya Divas, 2011.

Ironically, one of the winners, Mr. Karl Jacob, a learned man, and exemplary professor and an ardent Indian, who wanted to highlight the complications around the visa could not make it to the event because he could not get a visa in time.

Ironical it may sound but it is the truth. Karl’s visa had expired and to get a renewal on the same, he was asked to renounce the citizenship of India, which has already been announced. Now, logically, how can you renounce something that you don’t have any more?

This is what the U.S. State Department had to say about Indian visa policies: ‘ Please note that Indian visa regulations have gone through frequent, poorly advertised, and inconsistently enforced changes during the past year’.

This is not the case for Canada or New Zealand, or many other countries, they are specific to the U.S. it seems. For one thing, they now distinguish Indian born U.S. citizens from other U.S. citizens. If you are Indian born U.S. Citizens, you don’t get a 10 year visiting visa (while other U.S. citizens can get it as agreed by both countries on a bilateral agreement) – they get a five year entry visa paying almost double the cost for a 10 year visiting visa and waiting for a longer period of time.

For countries like China, an ex-Chinese will get a two year visiting visa while ex-Indians can get only a one year visa. Russians encourages ex-Russians to keep and renew their Russian passports even after they become U.S. citizens, and encourage them to use the Russian passport to enter Russia. In other words, most countries will make it easier for their x-countrymen and women to get back to visit.

I am sure there must be some reasoning for such restrictions by the Indian Government, but I doubt if they have been communicated to the aam aadmi of India. And if not so, why? Isn’t that the basis of a democracy?

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