I began looking up the requirements for a transit visa to New Zealand a few days back. It turns out that I have to cough up $150 and go through the usual amount of admin hassle for the privilege of spending 8 odd hours in transit at the Auckland airport.
Seriously?
Of course, there are a few countries on the waiver list and of course, India isn’t on it. If I had done this research before I booked my non-cancellable ticket, I would have avoided the NZ stop altogether. But, what’s done is done. This time, I decided to respond to this annoyance differently – by focusing on developing the world’s best visit visa system. Here is my 5 step plan –
1. Abolish transit visas. (Again, seriously?)
2. Every visit visa (3-6 month – business/tourist visits only) application needs to meet a target of 30 points. The home country pre-allocates the 30 points to it’s favourite countries – So, European passports get 30 points pre-filled; this is how the system works today.
3. If you are from a country that starts with 0 points (that’s at least 2.5 Billion Indians and Chinese or put differently, about half the world’s population), you gain 3 points for every business trip made to countries on the home country’s “favorite” list and 1 point for every tourist trip. Every repeat trip gives you 1 and 0.5 points respectively.
4. The UN requests every country to fill in a point allocator page in the first page of every passport so immigration officials can stamp in new additions. This does not apply to long term stays or immigration as I understand these situations are more nuanced.
This way, if you’re a Chinese national whose made business trips to 10 different European and American countries, you earn the 30 points on merit and qualify for visa-on-arrival.
This post is specially dedicated to all the current and future bureaucrats in the ALAD community. Let’s get this changed then.
A Learning a Day 