---------------------------------------------------------- Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/goa-net/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Goanet2003/ ----------------------------------------------------------
From: joseph sequeira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The High Commissioner for India December 8, 2002 Ottawa Dear Sir, My wife and I, who incidentally are both over 70 years of age and who emigrated from Pakistan 36 years ago, look forward to spending the winter months in Goa -- both to escape the Canadian cold as well as to make our annual pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Francis Xavier in Old Goa. We normally apply for our Indian visa a couple of weeks before our departure and every year so far have been granted our visas on the same day as we submitted our applications. You can imagine our surprise this year when we were told by the Indian Consular staff in Toronto that the visa rules have now changed and that because of our previous Pakistan residence our visa applications would take a minimum of four months to process. We were truly shocked and disappointed and attempted to explain to the Consular staff that not only have we been travelling to Goa every year for the past 10 years, but that our age and our long residency in Canada as Canadian citizens should exempt us from this four month condition; needless to say our pleas fell on deaf years and left us with no other option than to cancel all our travel plans. I accept that a visa is a privilege and not a right and that every country has the sovereign right to prescribe conditions that apply to its granting of visas. I also accept that in India’s case the potential terrorist threat has enhanced its security concerns and rightly so; but what I fail to understand is the inability of the Consular staff to differentiate between a potential terrorist and a genuine visitor. As an example - from the many mujahedeen ”that have either been killed or arrested in Indian how many have been 70 year old Roman Catholic Goans? Isn’t it therefore absurd to make the assumption that because of circumstances beyond our control that found us in Pakistan at the time of partition we should all be considered as security threats and subjected to a vigorous four month investigation? Both my wife and I have always had a close affinity and love for India which accounts for our annual visits and it is precisely this that makes the hurt of the disappointment to exempt us from new requirements more poignant. Unfortunately this bureaucratic obscurantism, if I might call it so, diminishes India’s reputation as being a secular progressive democracy and reduces it to the equivalency of some third world countries that often subscribe to the theory that whatever the circumstances bureaucratic supremacy can never be breached -- an unfortunate but true analogy . I hope you will read this letter in the spirit in which it is being written --- a spirit of disappointment, yes, but also in a spirit of anticipation hoping that some day soon the Indian bureaucracy will abandon its petty-mindedness and allow the country to fulfil its aspiration of being counted as part of the democratic first world. I wish you and yours a very happy New Year. Thank you. God Bless you. J.E Sequeira 2180 Marine Drive, Apt. 1904 Oakville, Ontario. L6L 5V2 -------------------------------------------------------
