Okay. I don’t want this to be a rant, and I will try my utmost best to prevent that from happening. Let me present the facts:

1. As of today, February 25, 2014, and according to the UK Border Agency website (www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk) it costs USD $1,253 to apply for a general, family, child or sports visitors’ visa for up to ten years.

2. The cost for application for up to five years in all these categories is USD $869.

3. If you want your visa to be valid for up to 2 years, the application cost is USD $473.

4. For up to six months (single entry), the application cost is USD $136.

5. A transit visa costs USD $92 to apply.

For those of you who are bad at math or just don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, let me break it down for you: if I like to travel and want to do so to the UK with my hypothetical family of four, it will cost us $526,260 (over half a million Jamaican dollars!) to apply, i.e., be granted the opportunity to be considered being given the chance to travel freely for leisure to this country for the next ten years. After which we would have to apply again.

Enough of the fear-mongering and sensationalized details. Let’s get personal. I am a Jamaican. My ultimate dream (for now) is to be able to travel the world and see with my own eyes all the beautiful and historic sites I’ve long read and dreamed about. These are two things that cannot be separated from me: my Jamaican-ness, and my desire to travel.

So let me get this straight. I, as a national of a country that you raped and robbed of its resources, and set on a trajectory to destruction that (let’s face it) we are not likely to recover from by 2030 — well-meaning slogans and all…

I must pay roughly $10,000 (92USD) just to enter your country in transit to another. But…GOD FORBID I want to leave the airport, walk along its streets, mingle with its people, gaze longingly at the Big Ben and the London Eye and Buckingham Palace, then I must pay one of the hefty fees above in order to be considered. That is, of course, in addition to the money that I’m going to spend to get there, the money that I’m going to spend to stay there, and the money that I’m going to spend eating and buying souvenirs and overall contributing to your economy.

Oh.

Now, I’m NOT saying the world owes me the chance to have my dreams come true. I’m NOT saying that Great Britain is the source of all or even most of Jamaica’s woes. (Although I’m not NOT saying it either *grin*). I’m definitely NOT saying that Jamaica’s leaders and people shouldn’t take responsibility and get their shit together 52 years after independence. And I’m NOT saying that countries shouldn’t take precautions to try and keep unsavoury characters out of their borders.

What I’m saying is that I honestly don’t understand the rationale behind the exorbitantly priced application fee FOR JAMAICANS (and people from the Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos). It is clearly a money-making venture, and not about paperwork, or there would not be different costs for the length of the visa. If they are trying to discourage persons who will “run weh”, it’s much easier to find $100,000 when I’m going to be leaving my homeland…and much more difficult when I know I will have to come back and pay bills, and buy food, and pay rent. The entire system, therefore, is counter-productive and totally backwards. What is the point of this ridiculously high fee, GB? US nationals don’t need a visa to visit, but I do. I, who will probably love your country for 3 weeks, but still won’t be able to wait to come back to my warm paradise where I don’t have to work like a slave to survive.

What I’m saying is that this is the future and the world is much more open than it was 30 or even 10 years ago. Generation Z is being born now. Get with the times, UK.

And don’t think you’ve gotten away, oh US of A. Oh no…not with your ridiculous embassy saga drama. The price to apply for a US visa may not be so high, but the cost to your pride and sense of human dignity is arguably greater. Where shall I start? Is it the long lines applicants have to form outside in the sun even though there is a HUGE (literally huge) building apparently FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE of dealing with said applicants just 10 feet (and one huge gate) away?

Is it the public de-robing (okay…de-belting) exercise each applicant is put through, then hurriedly told to re-dress while being herded along in the line? Or is it the interview area where you STAND directly IN FRONT OF other applicants, while an amplified voice asks PERSONAL questions for all to hear? Again, all of this occurs on the ground floor in such a limited space that you just have to wonder before being whisked away from US holy ground…just what do they use all that other space for?

I am convinced that a trip to the US embassy is an exercise in public humiliation. Of course, the successful applicant is so rare and so over-joyed that all is forgotten in that moment of fleeting, elated triumph. For the droves of unsuccessful peddlers who must either recall it as an embarrassing anecdote later with friends, or worse, suck it up and apply again next year, the humiliation is much more biting. Nevertheless, humiliation it is, and so glaring that I genuinely wonder why no one has called the human rights watch of Amnesty International to mop up the mess.

All this…all this…just to be granted the chance to see another (more successful?? The jury is still out on that one honestly) country. All this, because I happened to be born in the “wrong” country. As my friend, who shall remain nameless, succinctly put it, “The whole immigration thing is one f*cking sham.”

Exploitation plain and simple. And the worst part is, no one does anything about it. Not the government. Not the media. Not the disgruntled and embarrassed citizens. Well, consider this something. Shame on you United Kingdom. And shame on you United States of America.