Visa

Source: uwf.edu

The Oxford Dictionary says that border means “a line separating two political or geographical areas, especially countries”.

The borders establish the boundaries of the territory of the nations and, even though most of them are just fictional, they are sometimes harder to be surpassed than if they were high mountains.

Every day, we see in the press cases of people who risk their lives to surpass the border of the countries seeking better life condition, like those migrants that cross the Mexican desert to reach the USA or those migrants that go from Africa to Europe in canoes.

Some of these people make it, some of these people are arrested and some of these people die trying to reach other countries, but all of them have something in common: they do not have a Visa.

The Visa, word derived from the Latin expression “Charta Visa” – which means paper that has been seen, is the right key that opens the gates of all borders in the world, that is, this document is an authorisation issued by the countries allowing people that are not their citizens to enter in their territories.

There are several reasons that motivate a person to leave his/her own country and head to another country: tourism, medical treatment, work, seeking asylum, war, investment and others.

Due to this, all countries have several types of Visas, each one suitable for every single reason that justifies the entrance of a foreigner in their territories, and each type of Visa has the requirements that the aliens (word also used to refer to foreigners) must meet in order to earn the permission to enter in the territory of a country.

For example, when someone applies for a Tourist Visa, this person is usually required to show proofs that he/she has enough bonds with his/her country, so they are not using the trip to migrate illegally, thus this person will have to show that he/she has a job, money to support himself/herself during the trip, accommodation and so on.

Sometimes, depending on the country that the foreigner comes from, due to international agreements, he/she does not need a Visa to enter in the territory of another country.

An example of this is the fact that Portuguese citizens do not need a Visa to enter in the USA or Brazil as tourists.

Larissa Bona