Borders Are For Poor People
My family just applied for UK visas which cost $130 each. The private company doing it charges $25 for a ‘Gold Premium Package’ and other random charges. If you want get your passport in five days (instead of two months) you can pay her Majesty nearly $700. And of course, your application has to include proof that you’re rich, or they’ll reject you and keep the money. The whole thing is a fucking scam. International borders are just open discrimination against the colored and especially the poor.
Meanwhile the rich—even those with apartheid passports like Sri Lanka’s—can buy their way out. They can jump through these hoops or even get ‘investor passports’ or other bullshit. It’s all pay-to-play, but laundered through so much dreary paperwork that it appears fair. But it’s not fair at all. The whole thing is premised on the idea that rich people deserve more freedom of movement than the poor, and they don’t.
I was sitting there waiting to collect our passports and an old lady comes up with a cane. She’s brought her medical reports because somebody told her to. The security guard—a guy who wouldn’t get a visa himself—tells her she’s in the wrong place, she needs to go to Horton Place, which is all the way across town. He asks where’s her family and there’s no one. She’s all alone. There’s no fucking…
