Are countries using visas as weapons to fight diplomatic battles?

In just one month in three meetings with the USA, Australia, and New Zealand, India’s Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar has flagged the topic of visa backlog for Indians.

At the other end, recently-dumped UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, made a priceless gaffe. In reply to a query about the need for visa flexibility for students and entrepreneurs under an India-UK FTA, Braverman said, “But I do have some reservations. Look at migration in this country – the largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants”.

An interview for a visitor visa for the USA now runs a backlog of over two and a half years according to its own data (see table). The delays for the UK are far less, but the current two months as per the high commission data are double the standard one month.

Visa to Europe (students\exchange\employment)

Country	Waiting time now	Normal waiting time
UK	7weeks plus	3 weeks plus
Germany	10 months	one month
Switzerland	four months	two months

Source: Embassies

“The Covid impact on staffing is over (in consulates) but the backlog for Indian visas has climbed only from early this year”, said an official at the Indian external affairs ministry. The official was referring to the surprising difference in time for visa processing time for the same US visa in Beijing (2 calendar days) and in New Delhi (894 days).

“My gut feeling is that it is linked to our political position on the Russia-Ukraine war which is against the European stand’, the official added. However, UK High Commissioner Alex W Ellis Tweeted in October, "We are on track to get back to processing (India to UK) visa applications within our standard of 15 days”.

Not surprisingly, even the embassies of Switzerland and Germany have advised applicants on their websites about possible delays. Student visa to Germany, for instance, has a backlog of 10 weeks (see table). "Decisions on visa applications and the timelines to process them are at the sole discretion of the respective embassies/consulates and may vary from one mission to another. The processing timelines are specified in some of the respective embassy/consulate websites, if not all", Prabuddha Sen, COO, South Asia, VFS Global told Business Standard.

Visa to US

Visa type	From India*	From Beijing*	From Paris*
Visitor	894	2	520
Student/Exchange	423	2	8
Others	304	3	220

*Calender Days
Source: US embassy

Visa diplomacy, a term coined in a 2004 paper by Kevin D Stringer, for a paper for Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, seems to be gaining traction the world over. Stringer had defined visa diplomacy as the “use of visa issuance or denial at an individual, group or interstate level, to influence another state’s policies”. The irritants in the visa regime, ratcheted up by Braverman’s own goal, have almost sunk the India-UK free trade talks. It could also delay the India-EU talks, which had astonishingly resumed in June this year, after a nine-year hiatus.

While India does seem to be facing the rough end of visa diplomacy, barriers are going up globally. Most of these are part of the protectionist trend worldwide, countries are ramping up rules, especially about visas, which potentially allow entrants to work in some form or other. The UK last week expanded its British National Overseas (BNO) route to encourage inflow from Hong Kong, to cripple the economic life of the latter.

Emphasis only on highly skilled

Central to these exercises are the moves to attract highly skilled workers and drain out the lower-end ones. OECD has coined the term “digital nomads”, in a paper on visa policies to describe those who might wish to stay somewhere and work elsewhere are welcome. To be sure, there were earlier episodes like post-September 2001 when higher education departments in the USA ran dry of foreign students as Washington DC rung in huge restraints.

The trend has sharpened globally after the coronavirus pandemic, as countries balance the need to provide more health care in future emergencies, to foreigners who will compete with the locals. It makes sense, therefore, to subject those lower down the economic ladder to stricter scrutiny.  Yet, work permits and visa regimes are critical to facilitate the cross-border movement of people, says Arpita Mukherjee, a specialist on trade issues. The Professor at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations says, “the widening spread of online applications for different types of visa is expected to cut down processing time for business travellers”. It does not seem to have happened, though, as countries raise scrutiny.

Singapore plans to bring in a law by early 2023, to almost weed out work permit visas, applicable for semi-skilled migrant workers restricting immigration into the city-state. Even at the top end, the feted employment pass will be available for overseas professionals only with a floor salary of $10,000 a month, double the current threshold.

Saudi Arabia has sought to offer fair rules for expatriate workers, but it has also made it costlier for companies to bring back such workers, and declared them absent from work. These absences are often due to non-payment of wages. A survey by an Indian think tank showed that 39 per cent of the workers from West Asia returning to Kerala and Tamil Nadu faced issues of non-payment of wages. The new rules will raise the cost of going back to those jobs.

Hong Kong last week announced sweeping changes to its visa rules under which the “government will proactively trawl the world for talent”, said the city’s chief executive John Lee. While the city has seen a crippling departure of 140,000 workers, it will still mostly encourage immigrants at the top of the income scale, just like Singapore.

In contrast with the globally converging norms on passports, which are veering towards electronic ones, the rules governing visas in most countries are predictably different. And this has spread in a more protectionist world order to cleave between categories of foreigners arriving on shore. And central to those are the rules around visas.

An OECD report “International Migration Outlook 2021”, notes that globally more countries are now offering the carrot of faster processing time but making the switch over to the digitalisation of visas to do more intense checks on worker status. While Covid brought home the need for immigration to replenish the dwindling stock of local workers at home, like “specific measures to facilitate the entry of health care and seasonal agricultural workers”, the accent clearly is on making the inward pathways for high income easier but difficult for others.

Digital Nomad

This is what has surprised the Indian external affairs official. Sen noted "With the opening of international borders and resumption of international flights from March 2022, there has been an unprecedented surge in visa applications from India. On an average, VFS Global is receiving approximately 17,000 applications from India in a day even during the lean travel season, while there has also been a marked shift in the seasonality pattern in the post restart era".

But the data on visa issuance from the USA government site shows only 88,056 visas were issued for Indians across 41 categories in September. A third of these were for the highest category H1-B and their spouses H4. The numbers issued at the same time in pre-Covid years, in September 2019 and 2018, were roughly the same (see table). The conclusion is obvious. Embassies like those of USA have not increased the pace of issuance, despite the rush. The massively longer waiting time means there is more scrutiny.

In other OECD countries, a new visa regime is clearly in the works. This will be a novel response to the OECD paper, Migration Policy Debates notes. “A dedicated pathway for digital nomads and remote workers is a novel response by several OECD and non-OECD countries to adapt to the changing world of work”. Countries earlier had practically sold visas to high-net-worth individuals. The threshold for a Digital Nomad electronic visa is far lower at a range of Rs 3.5-4 lakh per month income and runs no risk of cross-country problems.

It notes that these Digital Nomad Visas are now issued by six OECD countries and at least 22 non-OECD countries. They will allow foreign workers to stay in the country and work remotely for a company abroad. Many others, the paper says have announced plans to introduce such visas.

Like the weaponisation of technologies and of capital (sanctions), Covid and the Russia-Ukraine war seems to have triggered similar weaponisation of cross-border movement of workers. Just as the war had made the EU keen to resume trade talks with India, the visa battles will possibly drown it again.