Nigeria and Ghana are early victims of a new United States policy targeting 36 countries for potential visa restrictions.
1. The beloved 5-year US visa for Ghanaian and American middle-class folks is going to become super-scarce!
2. Most US visa applicants in these countries will get a 3-month, single-entry visa. If you know how much the middle classes cherish their multiple-entry long-term visas, you can bet your last Naira that this is going to hurt.
3. Can Ghana and Nigeria retaliate?
A. One of the reasons the US is doing this is actually based on a claim that US citizens coming to Ghana don’t get long-term, multiple-entry visas as often as Ghanaian citizens visiting the US do. Thus, they are trying to frame the issue as one of “reciprocity”. Something that, per policy, they ought to review regularly. Our governments should publish stats on this. Is it true or not?
B. The visa regimes of some other places Ghanaians like to visit, like Europe, China, and the Middle East, are not any more liberal. Getting long-term, multiple-entry visas for these places has been quite hard. It may he hard to justify retaliation against the US when visa rules for other places seem just as tight or even tighter. Except, of course, that there is no rule that says that retaliation must be symmetrical.
4. The US has set out some areas of reform it wants to see in target countries before it can even consider loosening the restrictions. The challenge is that it has set itself up as the Judge of whether or not those reforms are succeeding or not. Some of these reforms are:
A. Higher cooperation in facilitating the deportation of citizens who violate US law.
B. Improve the authenticity of civil documents and share intelligence.
C. Helping limit visa overstaying of citizens.
5. This is not the first time the US has threatened such actions. In the past, the issues have been resolved quietly, through diplomatic channels. Given the scale and scope of the restrictions this time around, citizen interest is likely to be much higher, putting pressure on the government to openly discuss the measures it intends to take in response.
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