Travel Restrictions Across the Globe

Visa's and travel restrictions is a huge industry worldwide. Developed countries like USA and in the EU are making money on foreigners any way they can. At the same time, foreigners have little alternatives and I did a little research on this. The justifications are riddled in obscurity.

For example lets take UK Visa fees. Although at first sight they may not look enormous, consider simply the fact that for a 1 year VISA to the country, you need to pay 215 pounds sterling every time you go to renew. That is 645 pounds or about 1000 US dollars for a three year stay. If you are a student at a UK university, this will be the minimum cost excluding any documents that you will need to produce for their designated body which may cost additional fees to produce (e.g. proof that you are a student) Now add to that time spent on doing this work every year, collecting documents and waiting around in queues. Not only this, but if you want to stay in the UK for now big purpose for more than a few months, you need an invitation. You also face an interrogation procedure at passport control where the guy that asks you the question has spent less time than you in the country.

Consider that while studying in the UK, you may have to visit several other countries and now you can see that every year EU, US and many other governments make money for a service that does not generate any value. UK despite its stringent rules has huge problems with immigration. The rules are a burden on all the foreigners while the illegal immigrants continue to overcome all the obstacles and live in the country. After all it only takes a student or tourist visa.

The critical point is however that not only do countries far apart from each other cannot find cooperation on this front, even close neighbors cannot do so. The EU and Russia have been partners for many years, share a lot in common values and yet it is not possible to give citizens of the Russia Federation the option to visit countries in the EU without a big application process a sizable fees. If you travel a lot you can see that this is big business that creates jobs and governments are hesitant of change.

EU governments really don't have a solution to the immigration problem which they would like fixed and instead hide their faces under the numerous travel restrictions they continue to impose on citizens of many neighboring countries.

So what if you have a home and want to live in the UK? Doesn't matter, you still need to apply every year. (since they normally grant you a visa for no more than 6 months) If they can't fix some of the big items like war in Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq, they would do well by focusing on some of the issues they can do something about.

So unless you want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars and become a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis as part of its investment for citizenship programme, there is no other solution on the table today.