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

Migration

Source: criterionglobal.wordpress.com

Today, I will talk about migration because citizenship and migration are subjects that walk together holding hands, since migration laws always observe the citizenship aspect of the nations, therefore, it is almost impossible to think of them separately.

Besides a lawyer, I am also an International Law scholar and these subjects, along with Human Rights, are my study speciality.

I have already published some articles and two monographies approaching these themes and for this reason I will also use this space to talk about migration, every Saturday, continuing to use easy and simple language with the purpose of not only spreading information, but also to make myself understood for anyone.

Taking this into account, I will begin talking about Portuguese and Brazilian Migration, which are those I have more experience, yet I will try to explain a little bit of the migration rules from other countries as the USA, Canada, the UK and others.

But before analysing the migration laws of each of the above mentioned countries, I will speak a little bit about the concept and history of migration. Below, I provide you some extracts of my work “Laws against illegal migration and Human Rights violation. The case of the Directive Return and Arizona SB 1070”:

Migration is the movement of entrance (immigration) or exit (emigration) of a person or group of persons, usually seeking better life conditions.

I must highlight that migration is not something new, but something as ancient as humankind, once before achieving the “status” of “homo sapiens”, the human beings were already migrating from one side to the other of the globe seeking places which were more favourable to their survival.

Today it is estimated that there are around 214 million migrants in the world. The continent that hosts the biggest amount of migrants is Europe, with around 69.8 million, and the country that individually hosts more migrants is the USA (around 42.8 millions).

According to the International Organization for Migration, this is a phenomenon that reaches not only Europe and the USA, but all countries of the world. This organization also mentions that around 10% to 15% of the migrants are illegal aliens.

Larissa Bona

Tomorrow: Brazil