So who does get a visa?

Middle Cat and I are making final travel plans for our long awaited trip. I wish I felt excited about it. I should be excited. I am not -yet.

I think the problem is that there is rather a lot to do between now and finally putting a paw on the first plane. Perhaps I will feel differently when I do that. This trip has been far too long in coming. 

We had to get the "ETA" to enter the UK - an electronic authorisation to enter - and they came through with no difficulty. Our other destination, Singapore, we just fill out cards before landing. There is no reason to suppose we will have a problem there.

Some people will find it much more difficult to do something like enter this country. There are others who will not be permitted to enter at all. Whether this is right or wrong will depend on someone's individual circumstances.

I have a friend who was born in the UK. One of her children was also born there, the other was born here. It means that there are differing rights of equal generations down to enter, work and live in the UK. This is so even though their ancestry in all other respects is equal. That seems strange but it is how the law works.

Yesterday there was a piece in our state newspaper about a woman who had been granted a visa to enter this country although she was an outspoken supporter of Hamas. Today there is another piece saying that her visa had been withdrawn. She is openly a supporter of a proscribed terrorist organisation.  Apparently there are two opposing points of view on this. 

Who do you allow to enter the country? There are people I would prefer were not allowed to enter the country. It is likely most people feel the same way. That a visa was ever granted to the woman I have just mentioned is something we should be alarmed about. It suggests that the process for review may not be working. She is apparently a well known "agitator" who expresses her views loudly and openly and the government had concerns about her. Whether you believe she should or should not have been granted a visa it was first granted in contravention to government guidelines. There have been other people with much less radical views who have not been permitted to enter the country and give a single lecture at a university.

The question of who gets a visa and who does not get a visa will always be a difficult one. If radical supporters of terrorism are getting visas and much less radical people with no criminal history are not getting them there is a problem. I know of someone who has been denied a visa because he openly criticises the provision of puberty blockers to young children. Is he a radical? The government thinks he will cause distress and denied him a visa.

Perhaps politics as well as community safety is at work here.