Steve Cisler on Fri, 16 Jan 2004 19:58:08 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> An ID for ID makes the whole world a mess :) |
The whole complex problem of identity (as far as national governments are concerned) reminded me of the Brazilian I met on a flight to Amman, Jordan in October. His parents were Palestinian (he was born in Jerusalem), and he moved to Sao Paulo as a kid. Now he lives in another city further south and runs an import business.. He was telling me about the area around Ciudad de l'Este in Paraguay and how Palestinians and others can buy official papers (not counterfeit) from the police and then proceed across the river into Brazil where they "disappear." It's a very porous border there. My own experience getting a business visa for Brazil was expensive and not very pleasant, but that's par for a lot of people trying to get visas to my country. Here are two amazing examples: In Laos at the US embassy in Vientiane (on a side street where vehicles can't get up enough speed to breach the ramparts) there was a sign at the entrance warning relatives of Laotians (we have about 30,000 in the San Francisco area and another 25,000 in Fresno, and many more in Minnesota) that they might need to pay for a DNA test when applying for a visa. That's a huge cost for some rural villager trying to see his brother in St. Paul. And how many places can conduct DNA in an under developed country? In Uganda earlier this year, a Ugandan IT expert working with USAID in the U.S. embassy in Kampala was chosen to go for technical training in Washington, DC. However, the visa officer in the same embassy would not give him a visa for the three week training! According to her, his profile (educated, unmarried) made him a good candidate for not returning. Ugandans have to pay for each visa interview (about $100 or so) and then another fee for the visa. One friend had spent $200 and failed to get a visa. (Uganda per capita income is about $300). Probably all these barriers are going to be even more rigid, and the reciprocity will increase. Steve Cisler # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net