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- 導讀
簽證就是一個國家兩個部門之間的協調產物：旅遊局和安全局。
在很多情況下，政府不是簡化辦理簽證的程序，而是把整個簽證辦理都外包給私人公司。遊客除了要給簽證的申請費外，還需要付給代辦公司手續費。如果需要享受貴賓服務、短信提醒、快遞服務，那遊客還需要付一筆費用。
# Travel Visas :A strange sort of welcome#
The 26 European countries with a common visa policy—the “Schengen group” —require tourists from India and other developing countries to provide several months' worth of bank statements and pay slips. Visitors to Britain often have to fill in a ten-page application form, including details of every trip abroad for the past ten years. Business travelers to India must provide two references.
In many cases, instead of simplifying the visa process, governments have offloaded it to private contractors. Travelers may now have to pay a service fee to the company handling their application on top of the standard visa fee. The biggest firm in this growing business is VFS Global, which is part of Kuoni, a Swiss tourism company. Starting from a single premise in Mumbai in 2001, handling applications for American visas, VFS now has more than 1,900 visa centers in 124 countries, processing paperwork for 48 governments. Until VFS opened its Mumbai office, applicants had to queue for an average of five hours in the sweltering heat outside the American consulate. After the job was handed to the contractor, the typical waiting time fell to one hour.
However, applicants still have no choice but to submit to whatever petty demands contractors make—such as, say, banning them from using mobile phones while they sit waiting for their appointments. If the staffs are rude, the queues are badly managed or the “extras” extravagantly priced, travelers can hardly take their business elsewhere. The application-processing firms are profiting both from travelers’ lack of choice and from governments' failure to consider the economic damage caused by their visa requirements.
- 參考譯文
擁有統一簽證政策的26個歐洲國家，即“申根國”，要求來自印度和其他發展中國家的旅行者提供數月的銀行對賬單和工資單。去英國旅行的人通常得填寫十頁的申請表，包括過去十年每次出國旅行的詳細情況。去印度的商務旅行者必須提供兩份推薦信。
很多時候，政府並未簡化簽證流程，而是把它轉交給私營承包機構。現在，除了標準的簽證費，旅行者可能還需要向處理申請的公司支付一筆服務費。在這個不斷增長的行業中，最大的公司是VFS Global，它是瑞士旅遊公司瑞士旅業集團的子公司。2001年VFS從位於孟買的一個單一辦理機構起家，處理美國簽證申請，現在它在124個國家設有1900多個簽證中心，為48個政府處理簽證材料。VFS在孟買開設分公司之前，申請人要頂著酷暑在美國領事館外排平均五個小時的隊。這項工作轉交承包機構之後，一般的等候時間減至一小時。
但是申請人除了接受承包機構的各項要求之外仍然別無選擇，無論這些要求多麼瑣碎，例如，不準在等待面談時使用手機。即便工作人員粗魯無禮，隊伍排得亂七八糟，或者“額外費用”高昂，旅行者也難有其他選擇。簽證申請處理公司從兩個方面獲利：一是旅行者缺乏選擇，二是政府沒能考慮到簽證要求造成的經濟損失。
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