A Brazilian angle

A Brazilian angle

Myra Sidharta (The Jakarta Post, May 3, 1996) is not alone
with his visa problems. Visa officers are bureaucrats and they
live to stamp forms and shuffle paper. To keep budgets from being
cut -- or to get them increased -- missions abroad persuade their
foreign affairs' people back home that they should screen people
to death. Consequently they demand to know anything that might
have any relevance to the visa application before stamping your
passport.

I stopped going to Canada, a nice country with the friendliest
people on earth, because they introduced visas for Brazilians in
the late 1980s and their visa sections are nasty.

I would like to visit France but they started asking for visas
in the late eighties. I want to go to Perth one of these days,
but if the Aussies require a visa, forget it.

OSVALDO COELHO

Bandung, West Java