The audacity to call this three-card game “Democracy”

Aug 26, 2015 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
I am happy to see that others have come on board sounding their voices and lending weight with regards to the behaviour of the U.S.A Embassy in relation to visa applications.  I have twice criticised their modus operandi.
As one man correctly asserted, it appears to be a money-making set-up, period.
Yes, I’m happy to see that others are becoming bold enough to face the big bad wolf.   Not that it will make them stop – one couldn’t be that naïve, that’s not the nature of the big bad wolf who cares not a hoot what the world thinks, no!  Obdurate like a mule, tough as nails and daring like Rambo.  “We bend to no one!”
Now I have never really done any kind of business with the Guyana USA Embassy, I did go there many years ago, but left without doing anything.  I remember the security guard that I encountered, he was behaving like a robot as if he was being controlled mechanically. I was chewing gum and he came to me with his hand outstretched at my mouth indicating for me to spit it out into his hand, I took it out but didn’t give it to him. A little while after I left, I never felt comfortable.  And that was that.
But I have heard too many things over the years that just aren’t nice, the way we Guyanese citizens are treated as second class by the USA embassy personnel on our own land.
As I have said times before, the USA seems to suffer from a heavy overdose of paranoia, thus anyone desirous of going to that country is required to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that he/she is more innocuous than a dead mouse before he/she may be considered favourable.  For why else would you turn down a seven year old with pent-up anxiety and grand expectations of spending the August holidays with his cousin and other relatives in the USA?   Could it be the ISIS infiltration!?
More so, why make a request for those seeking visas to “come in” and still turn them down.  Look how many people jump at the request, had that request not been made, they would have been a bit more hesitant about putting $32,000 into taking a blind chance!  Knowing very well that they could be turned down for no apparent reason.
I have seen before questionnaires by the US embassy which one is required to satisfy. You are drilled to the point of being drained; it is as if the survival of your entire ancestry rests on the acquisition of that visa.  Man! it is tougher than the interrogation Jon Voight went through in the movie “The Odessa Files” although they already have your DNA.
As I figured it out, they start from the premise that everyone is desperate, hence a rogue and dishonest; that once given a chance will run and “duck”.  But this is far from being accurate, since as one irate gentleman informed us lately: he is a professional, a technocrat, highly qualified, substantially employed and financially sound.  He said he gave to them all relevant particulars, all at their disposal to double check and still he was turned down. If this gentleman wasn’t suspected of something sinister then why was he refused?
Give and take we do have bad guys, but why daub us with a broad brush? The majority of Guyanese are so darn hard-up that they wouldn’t dare try anything funny to jeopardise their chance.  But just what is it with the staff they are recruiting here, among them are individuals with petty vendettas, perked-up attitudes and arrogance, flexing their authority, who would don’t you because they feel like. There is no rule or principle guiding them, it’s all about what they see and feel, its personal – I like you, I don’t like you, I trust you, I don’t trust you.
Look! The US embassy – forget all that empty callous advice and explanation – has no clear cut policy, period, except in terms of one being labelled anti-American, an enemy of the state, and of which Guyanese are not! Have never been.
So when one of those upstarts who is so hyped–up with feeling excessively privileged and powerful in being employed with the American Embassy and displaying all sorts of comical facial expressions, before don’ting you after that $32,000 has been snatched away, one is bound to feel hurt, robbed – it is no different from the three card conman doing his thing along the road side. It is just that one is done with sophistication.
That very money that could have been used to outfit that very child for the new school term that was taken from you, they have stolen that child’s money, it is as plain as that, and you have nowhere else to turn to for a second opinion, nowhere to seek redress.  What that one individual says is it – end of story.  The US doesn’t give you any more space, period, thus your only course is through the printed media as I have opted to do, though this matters nothing to them.   And it drains me that some still have the audacity to call this three-card game “Democracy”
Frank Fyffe

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