Case For Universal Travel Visa

Just near 100 years ago, there were no passports and visas. Passports and visas became usually necessary travel documents only since World War I. The world has changed and people understandably today do not want to be in the risk of losing security where there isn’t any background check on people entering the country. It is arguably safer to know the person entering the country. Along with passports, visas are issued and authorized by governments for variety of reasons. Visas are making sure that traveler has no criminal convictions, that he doesn’t have an illness and so on — the things that could potentially harm the people in visiting country.

However, those who are perfectly “clean” do not deserve a same treatment. Getting a travel visa today for most of the countries is really painful and messy. You have to check whether your country has treaty with the country your want to visit, then to learn about the messy application process, then to apply and hopefully not get rejected because it happened that you missed one letter while writing your application with the pen (yes this actually happened to my friend few weeks ago for missing to write one letter when filling an application for a visa for China).

As people from the US usually can travel almost anywhere without visa, people from rest of the countries are most of the time exposed to ridiculously depressing process of applying for tourist visas. Beside this, it is important to understand that travel visas are choking tourism in probably all countries world-wide. It’s not what travelers like. We need to think about traveler’s experience in the process of getting to some country for a vacation or short stay.

I’m going to state the problems with travel visas today and offer a solution for the concept called Universal Travel Visa (UTV). Since it’s a huge topic, I will also talk about basic epistemology behind issuing visas in general. Even though I’m talking about visas for short visits, this needs to be understood in order to know the fundamental truth, and then gradually go from that truth to the solution.

The paranoia behind visas

I would argue that the main reason behind issuing visas is mainly because of irrational paranoia of illegal immigrants, not in order to do a background check. In my opinion, this needs to battled. Visas should be issued in order to do a simple background check on the person, fast and efficiently. Sayings like: “Illegal immigrants are stealing jobs and welfare”, “criminals are coming”, etc. are simply irrational. There’s a need for deeper understanding whether somebody will actually escape domestic country only for the reason to commit crimes in foreign country or the person is actually escaping the country to find peace. Immigrants are escaping their countries for the reason of finding peace and freedom from fellow man. Few things should be clear:

1. It’s not possible for an immigrant to get domestic citizen’s welfare.
2. If immigrant gets a job, it’s domestic citizen who will get welfare from his work. Millions of immigrants around the world are literally funding welfare states and not seeing a dime from it.
3. It’s unlikely that illegal immigrant will commit a crime in the sense that he will commit a crime against private property. It’s huge risk for them because they will be deported. However I would argue that there should be a background check on whether the visitor had some terrible crime convictions or terrorist attacks.
4. “Illegal immigration” is expensive because it is illegal. Not because immigrants are stealing jobs.

Applications are usually discriminatory & nonhuman

One of the biggest issues with applying and issuing visas today is that it’s looking like a very discriminatory process. The country’s government has the list of things which need to be fulfilled in order to be considered to get a travel visa. What they ignore is that even those who already live in their own societies are not fulfilling their lists of things ( among others, not having things like medical insurance, good moral character, perfectly healthy, etc.). As well judging the applicant by his nation by simply having false pre-judgments if traveler is coming from poorer country, practically saying that they should be left behind because their nation is “threat” to illegal immigration or similar. Why the fear?

Issuing authorities are inefficient & arrogant

In general, it all looks very old. The whole application process is ridiculously over-bureaucratic, adding stacks of irrelevant information through paper forms. Some countries like Australia and UK, among few other, implemented online applications for travel visas, although these are still in the early stage/didn’t create the best user experience. The costs are huge (on average 100 dollars to apply). And if rejected, the money for the application isn’t refunded. It’s basically a zero-sum game.

UTV — Universal Travel Visa

The idea behind UTVs is that it should be travel permit for the countries of the whole world. The institution issuing Universal Travel Visas could be thought as a United Nations for visas. Countries singed the agreement would enter the system.

So how would work?

The process of applying and issuing visas would be online, with latest technology backing the system. The point is to cut down the hustle. Since the concept is pretty big, but outcomes are neat and efficient, below are some of my basic ideas on how UTVs would work.

• UTVs can be applied for and issued once in two years.
• Process of application would be online backed by latest technology. The applicant would send basic information, a selfie, and a scanned copy of a passport through encrypted UTV app.
• The cost of application for UTV would be 20$ (and if rejected the money is refunded)
• It would take maximum 24 hours to get approved. If a person is a terrorist or a serious crime fugitive the visa will be rejected. UTV center would run background check on this type of things.
• Once approved, applicant would get a copy of unique sticker (with the number linked to the applicant’s name, address and the picture for a check on the country’s border) for the passport in the email, which needs to be printed by applicant and then placed in the passport to cut down the costs.
• UTVs can be used to travel to any country from the agreement which will be stated on the official UTV website.
• In the UTV center, there should be one representative from every country from the agreement, managing applications and making sure that application is smooth. This will be helpful since representatives would be working in the same building and they will have a much easier and better communication between each other. UTV center could be placed in London for an example.
• It would require that border police has a UTV software that is able to do a quick search on the information from the UTV passport sticker.
• Stays in country on UTV should be 6 months. This is to encourage exchange programs, volunteering and so on.

This concept would obviously require cooperation between governments, however, they can see the benefit of UTV since they are encouraging international tourism through easier access to travel visas.

Would love to hear what you guys think on how you would improve UTV. Share them in the responses below or send me an email.

If you love my idea about UTV, please share this article!