Indians are anxious to apply for a foreign visa. Some of it is our fault

Representational image | Indian tourists | Photo: Shankar S | Flickr

It’s not a good time to be an Indian travelling abroad. I don’t need to repeat the stories about how badly many Indian tourists behave in foreign countries: we have seen enough evidence of that in the photos, videos and anecdotes that have been published or posted online. But one consequence of the behaviour of a loud minority is that the rest of us now face more suspicion and disdain than we ever have before.

You can sense the changing mood if you talk to people planning trips abroad. Nearly everyone approaches the visa application process with dread and trepidation. At foreign airports, most (nearly all, perhaps) Indians feel at least a tinge of awkwardness if not outright fear before they go to the immigration desk to get their passports stamped on arrival. Even if they have valid visas, there is always an anxiety that the encounter with the immigration officer could be unpleasant.

It was not supposed to be like this. We were misled into believing that India had risen so much in global esteem that its citizens would be warmly welcomed at every foreign airport. Even if the immigration officer did not stand up to greet us and announce how much he admired our leader—as some had predicted—any suspicion that we were potential illegal immigrants trying to sneak into a Western country was supposed to vanish because of our rising status. Foreign officials, we were told, would be forced to respect India and its enhanced standing on the global stage.

It hasn’t quite worked out like that. India’s rank in the Henley Passport Index usually hovers between 75 and 80, on par with Gabon, Mauritania, and behind Rwanda or Tanzania. Indians can enter many countries without a visa, but the list largely includes nations such as Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Senegal and Angola. The Western countries that Indian tourists want to visit are not on it. Worse still, some countries are now rethinking their policies: the Thai cabinet recently decided to end visa-free entry for Indians.

The VFS controversy

Many Indians still can’t understand how it has come to this. Why aren’t we a superpower yet? They wonder. They feel angry and upset at having to nervously apply for visas and submit scores of documents (bank statements, tax forms, etc.) before they can travel. They hate the suspense of waiting for visas that may not be granted in time to confirm their tickets, and resent the fact that even if foreign consulates reject their visa applications, the hefty visa fees will never be refunded.

You can see some of this resentment in the little spurts of anger that periodically emerge. A recent report about routine EU audits of VFS, the agency that most Western countries use to handle visa applications, was briefly front-page news. Some of the criticism was valid (such as the pressure to opt for value-added services), but the media attention in India (VFS is an American-owned global company that operates in many countries) may have had other provocations. VFS is the only agency that most applicants actually deal with, so it became the focal point of public frustration with the difficult process of getting visas to Western countries.

In fact, VFS and other agencies that handle visa applications (though VFS is the largest, there are others and the rivalry leads to motivated leaks and plants) have no role other than clerical. They submit applications to the foreign consulates and the decisions are made by officials at the consulate.

Why does a process that should be painless cause so much grief? Well, put simply, it is because consulates and embassies are more sceptical of Indian applicants than they used to be. Too many Indians apply for tourist visas while their true intention is to emigrate. (According to one estimate, 10 Indians were caught trying to enter the US illegally every hour in one year.)

Some years ago, there was a spurt in applications to the Greek embassy. Most applicants had no desire to visit Greece. They applied because Greece issues Schengen visas, which not only permit entry to most European destinations but are also valid for Mexico. The racket was to enter Mexico on a Schengen visa issued by the Greeks and then cross illegally into the US.

There have been similar concerns about bogus visitors to Malta (which is a short boat ride from Italy) and various Eastern European countries.

All this only makes visa officials doubly suspicious. So does the role of visa agents who, knowing that consulates require bank statements and proof of intended travel, encourage applicants to borrow money and place it in their bank accounts temporarily to inflate balances, and to use dummy airline and hotel bookings. Consular officials are familiar with these scams and scan documents carefully (and time-consumingly) to look for them.

But not all delays and arbitrary decisions are justified. The truth is that many countries are not overly eager to welcome Indians. At many embassies, they simply don’t have an adequate number of staff to approve visas. Not only has the ratio of consular officials to applicants gone down, but even in absolute terms, the number of visa officials has still not returned to pre-Covid levels. That leads to needless delays and limits the number of application appointments per day, and results in visa denials that may seem arbitrary because overworked officials are likely to reject an application at the slightest whiff of suspicion.

And though all Western embassies will deny this, the reality is that anti-immigration sentiment throughout Europe has influenced how visas are issued. Consular officials are not tourism promoters. They don’t care if the number of visitors drops. That’s much better than being accused of letting in illegal immigrants.

The airport experience 

I don’t think any of the Western embassy officials in India are racist. But I am not so sure about Immigration officers at Western airports. Oddly enough, the UK now seems to have the lowest number of racist airport officials (though way back in 1968, a group of immigration officers came out openly in support of racist politician Enoch Powell and his policies), and in the US, the airport officials are equal opportunity, grouches. The problem in both these countries is staff numbers. 

Whether it is Heathrow or JFK, the lines at immigration can be enormous because so many counters remain unmanned. It could be because of budget cuts, but it is a scandal that such advanced countries offer arrival experiences that are on par with, say, Dhaka or Cairo.

As for racism at European airports, I am not so sure. I have had nothing but great experiences in France and Italy. In other countries, it depends on the official you end up with. I had a terrible experience in Amsterdam, but that may have been because the official I dealt with was young and foolish. And I am told that my bad experience in Frankfurt was not unusual, because officers there are instructed to sternly interrogate passengers. So perhaps it wasn’t racism; they were simply following orders.

The bottom line is that Indians cannot expect an easy ride at foreign airports. Some of this is our own fault. Too many Indians have abused the system. Some of it is because Western countries have too few staff and don’t really care about making the process smooth for Indians. And some of it, I always feel, has to do with racism.

But look at it this way: when I first started travelling abroad, there was no Schengen region with a single visa, and there were no convenient aggregators like VFS. I had to go from embassy to embassy to get visas. It was an exhausting and time-consuming process. At least now the system is much smoother. The problem lies with the indifference of many countries to the needs of Indian visitors and with our own record as potential scammers.

In any case, given how the rupee has fallen (it was around Rs 60 to the dollar in 2014 and is now around Rs 95), most of us won’t be able to travel abroad very much in the foreseeable future.

Maybe we won’t need to apply for visas at all. We will just holiday in India—visa-free!

Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Ratan Priya)