“What the British government with other governments in the Western hemisphere should set up is a “Special Immigrants Taskforce or Committee,” Mr. Sy writes on his Facebook account.
“Latter should be composed of British government officials drawn from their Immigration, intelligence services, customs, home office officials, members of the community of foreign diplomats from the affected countries in West Africa like The Gambia, amnesty international, civil society organisations, the media and representatives from the Immigrant Community,” he suggested.
He added that this should not exclude EU, UN, AU, ECOWAS representatives.
“What remains to be revisited with honesty and frankness is that shared responsibility between immigrants, their home based authorities, authorities governing their host nations and other stake holders for obvious reasons.”
“Success stories and sad stories of immigrants is as old as humanity itself. Therefore, causes and concerns that are stemming from recent times, cannot be addressed with a unilateral and paternalistic approach. It calls for serious research, exchange of notes, intelligence, create budgets, encourage voluntary services where needed and a lot more. With all these combined, their (immigrants ) countries of origin cannot be excluded from what is being discussed at the home office, EU and the like. Britain like its neighbors in Europe must be told that issuing short duration visas has to stop with immediate effect. Long duration visas is one of the recommendations some of us who were diplomats in Europe, North and South America in the 90s and 2000s made during meetings. During these meetings, challenges posed by “illegal immigration” were indeed put on the table.”
Mr. Sy also suggested that what visa issuing consuls or embassies must equally stop is the way they raise the bar monetarily, “yet do not even return part of what was paid to process the visa. Even whereas the applicants themselves do the greater part of the paper work! People in these nations they are targeting do see western embassies particularly France, as places where money is generated only for them to end up rejecting the visa applicants. Most of these applicants are with the belief that the former need their monies but not their faces. Which does indeed leave so much to be desired and at best shameful.”
“That’s the concept within the minds of those being called criminals in England today. At the end of the day those who use the ‘backway’ equally believe that countries in the Western hemisphere want to make money over visa applicants yet do deny them entry in a very frivolous way.”
“There is an old adage in Gambia which says: ‘if you do not like fish don’t munch the husk’. It is also questionable when visa issuing embassies keep on trying to justify non refundable visa fees across the board, when in reality it is only those issued visas whose paper work should call for full payment. Why? It should be that way because the rest do not have visas stamped on their passports. How can both be asked to pay the same amount when the paper work is different in terms of time, energy and stationery used?”
“Added to the above is the fact that there are other western companies benefitting from human trafficking, undocumented workers yet they always want to dive under the dark sea of the underworld to escape everything illegal they do including hidden slavery at the basement of some houses in the so called developed world. Who is protecting these shady western companies? Are they not criminals like those African immigrants being called criminals by Britain? These are chronic social diseases only laws, regulations, codes of conduct can remedy from the psyche of society.”
Most of those companies in the western hemisphere who exploit immigrants by capitalising on the vulnerabilities of these helpless travelers cum undocumented Immigrants, must also be identified, investigated and tasked to set aside a budget for the victims of an “economic war fare”, with exploitation as their weapon.”
