Public Agenda (Accra)
Opinion
9 May 2008
opinion
I wish to draw your attention to a systematic discrimination and human right abuse by officials of the Visa Section of the British High Commission in Ghana.
It will be recalled that on the 8 February 2008, an article featured in the Ghanaian media including Ghanaweb by Kwami Agbodza highlighted some of the systematic race prejudice by officials of the Visa Section of the British High Commission in Accra. Kwami Agbodza's article represented the voice of hundreds of voiceless poor Ghanaians who have suffered silently, discrimination and abuse in the hands Visa Section officials in Ghana.
Marriages have been broken, families have been torn apart and destabilized by officials of the Visa Section of the British High Commission through this systematic discrimination. There are testimonies where customers who provided all the required documentation have been refused visa on the grounds that they are too desperate to travel to the U.K. There are also instances where husbands, wives, sons, relatives who have proven beyond any reasonable doubt of their relationships with their sponsors, and without any interviews, have been denied the right to family re-union on the grounds that they were in a marriage of convenience, or that they were not genuine visitors.
There are also overwhelming evidence based on the compilation of visa refusal reasons to conclude that the British High Commission holds Africans in contempt and treats us as strangers even in our own country, the high percent of visa refusal in Ghana is a testimony to this fact. It therefore appears that, despite the abolition of slave trade some 200 years ago, white supremacy and colonial mentality still exists in the hearts and minds of some minority.
Officials of the Visa Section will go through your travel documents not to offer you the help and the services required but to find vague reasons to deny you a visa in what Kwami Agbodza and many other Ghanaian visa applicants have perceived to be dehumanizing treatment in our own country.
The question I want to ask here is "are Ghanaians who are legally resident in the U.K not entitled to family union". This is where I feel very strongly that our basic right under the current U.K human rights law is under threat.
Overwhelming majority of Ghanaians in the U.K are law abiding, hardworking and making positive contribution to the U.K economy. I wonder how many more Ghanaian families are going to be destabilized before the British High Commission realized the extent of harm they have caused.
Following Kwami Agbodza's article, the British High Commission issued a statement on 9th February 2008 denying these allegations and claiming that over 93% of customers rate their services as either very good or good. The British High Commission further stated that each application is assessed objectively based on immigration rules, and that race is not a factor. However, available statistics prove otherwise, and majority of visa applicants have serious doubts about this assertion too.
Ghanaians, for that matter Africans are often subjected to dehumanizing treatment in visa application, and I could not agree more with Kwami Agbodza when he used the phrase systematic prejudice and race discrimination at the Visa Section of the British High Commission in Ghana
I know the United Kingdom prides itself as one of the most tolerant, honest, fair and above all treats all human beings equal, irrespective of race, gender and religion. Unfortunately, Ghanaian visa applicants receive far less than this British pride. Customer satisfaction is the bedrock of every successful organization, and as customers we deserve firm, but fair treatment and also value for our money.
We as customers pay for your services, for that matter your salaries, we deserve to be treated fairly, and also we deserve value for money, and our rights under the current U.K human rights law needs to be respected.
Discrimination of the type alleged today by Kwami Agbodza and many hundreds of poor voiceless Ghanaians hurts, it destroys families, reduces trust and creates tension between communities. I am therefore calling on the Ghana Government and the British Authorities to look into these allegations in order to stop this toxic discrimination on our own soil.
Jalaal Hakim (UK)
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I will also like to emphasize that fact the British High Commission in Accra Ghana are indeed racist and the situation is so endemic that it should only be describe as institutional racism. By definition Institutional racism is, "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin" The situation is so bad that the British high commission in Accra have always failed on their duty to prosecute those who they claim to make fraudulent application. On the application forms of their visa it is clearly outlined that anyone found to make a false application will be prosecuted. I was in a situation myself, where I invited my wife to be to come spend some time with me in the UK. On making the application I was shocked to learn that her application had been rejected on the basis that, our relationship as they saw it was not genuine and there fake. Needless to say, the visa was rejected. I had faith in their complaint procedure, so took it upon myself to go through the complaint procedure. I completed the appropriate forms and sent them off in a timely manner. I was again shocked to find that the passion taken by the High Commission in Accra was upheld by Her Majesties Government in the UK. Again I was told that I and my wife to be had made a false application and consequently we had the application rejected. At this point I wrote to the High Commission in Accra to start prosecutions against both my wife to be and myself if they truly felt that we had breach their application rules and therefore the law in Ghana. This took place in 2005, we are now in 2008, I have not heard from them both in Accra or from the UK. All other application made after have been rejected, on the basis that “due to the applicants socio-economical situation, the probability that they will return to Ghana on completion of their visit to the UK is zero”. I have two friends who are in the same boat, regardless of our differences in each of our circumstances all our refusal letters are the same, rejected for the same reasons, word for word. With this short story I hope it has been illustrated that the treatment given to people is indeed institutional racism, by the fact that, both the High Commission in Accra and the UKVISAS in the UK as a collective, provide a service which is dishonest, contrary to their own laws, rules and regulations on the basis that, the socio-economical situation in Ghana, which applies to all Ghanaians, a group of people have made us dishonest to the extent that we as a group of people are incapable of making honest assertions on our application forms for visa. If this was not the case, how can three people with three different circumstances have the same letter, word for word sent to them? I will like to ask the British High Commission in Accra why they have failed in all three of our cases to prosecute us as by their rules stated on their application forms? I as a man was so hurts by my little experience that, I no longer live and work in the UK; I apply my trade now in South Africa, UAE and other counties. I was educated in the UK on a free basis from secondary school right through to university. I pay no tax to them and spend no money there, I have married my wife and we now have a child.
I will also like to highlight that fact the British High Commission in Accra Ghana are indeed racist and the situation is so endemic that it should only be described as institutional racism. By definition Institutional racism is, "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin" The situation is so bad that the British high commission in Accra have always failed on their duty to prosecute those who they claim to make fraudulent application. On the application forms of their visa it is clearly outlined that anyone found to make a false application will be prosecuted. I was in a situation myself, where I invited my wife to be to come spend some time with me in the UK. On making the application I was sucked to learn that her application had been rejected on the basis that, our relationship as they saw it was not genuine and there fake. Needless to say, the visa was rejected. I had faith in their complaint procedure, so took it upon myself to go through the complaint procedure. I completed the appropriate forms and sent them off in a timely manner. I was again sucked to find that the passion taken by the High Commission in Accra was upheld by Her Majesties Government in the UK. Again I was told that I and my wife to be had made a false application and consequently we had the application rejected. At this point I wrote to the High Commission in Accra to start prosecutions against both my wife to be and myself if they truly felt that we had breach their application rules and therefore the law in Ghana. This took place in 2005, we are now in 2008, I have not heard from them both in Accra or from the UK. All other application made after have been rejected, on the basis that “due to the applicants socio-economical situation, the probability that they will return to Ghana on completion of their visit to the UK is zero”. I have two friends who are in the same boat, regardless of our differences in each of our circumstances all our refusal letters are the same, rejected for the same reasons, word for word. With this short story I hope it has been illustrated that the treatment given to people is indeed institutional racism, by the fact that, both the High Commission in Accra and the UKVISAS in the UK as a collective, provide a service which is dishonest, contrary to their own laws, rules and regulations on the basis that, the socio-economical situation in Ghana, which applies to all Ghanaians, a group of people have made us dishonest to the extent that we as a group of people are incapable of making honest assertions on our application forms for visa. If this was not the case, how can three people with three different circumstances have the same letter, word for word sent to them? I will like to ask the British High Commission in Accra why they have failed in all three of our cases to prosecute us as by their rules stated on their application forms? I as a man was so hurts by my little experience that, I no longer leave and work in the UK; I apply my trade in now in South Africa, UAE and other counties. I was educated in the UK on a free basis from secondary school right through to university. I pay no tax to them and spend no money there, I have married my wife and we now have a child.
I will also like to highlight that fact the British High Commission in Accra Ghana are indeed racist and the situation is so endemic that it should only be described as institutional racism. By definition Institutional racism is, "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin" The situation is so bad that the British high commission in Accra have always failed on their duty to prosecute those who they claim to make fraudulent application. On the application forms of their visa it is clearly outlined that anyone found to make a false application will be prosecuted. I was in a situation myself, where I invited my wife to be to come spend some time with me in the UK. On making the application I was shocked to learn that her application had been rejected on the basis that, our relationship as they saw it was not genuine and there fake. Needless to say, the visa was rejected. I had faith in their complaint procedure, so took it upon myself to go through the complaint procedure. I completed the appropriate forms and sent them off in a timely manner. I was again shocked to find that the passion taken by the High Commission in Accra was upheld by Her Majesties Government in the UK. Again I was told that I and my wife to be had made a false application and consequently we had the application rejected. At this point I wrote to the High Commission in Accra to start prosecutions against both my wife to be and myself if they truly felt that we had breach their application rules and therefore the law in Ghana. This took place in 2005, we are now in 2008, I have not heard from them both in Accra or from the UK. All other application made after have been rejected, on the basis that “due to the applicants socio-economical situation, the probability that they will return to Ghana on completion of their visit to the UK is zero”. I have two friends who are in the same boat, regardless of our differences in each of our circumstances all our refusal letters are the same, rejected for the same reasons, word for word. With this short story I hope it has been illustrated that the treatment given to people is indeed institutional racism, by the fact that, both the High Commission in Accra and the UKVISAS in the UK as a collective, provide a service which is dishonest, contrary to their own laws, rules and regulations on the basis that, the socio-economical situation in Ghana, which applies to all Ghanaians, a group of people have made us dishonest to the extent that we as a group of people are incapable of making honest assertions on our application forms for visa. If this was not the case, how can three people with three different circumstances have the same letter, word for word sent to them? I will like to ask the British High Commission in Accra why they have failed in all three of our cases to prosecute us as by their rules stated on their application forms? I as a man was so hurts by my little experience that, I no longer live and work in the UK; I apply my trade in now in South Africa, UAE and other counties. I was educated in the UK on a free basis from secondary school right through to university. I pay no tax to them and spend no money there, I have married my wife and we now have a child.
This problem is so horrible, but sadly, I don't think it stops with the British High Commission. I'm an American and my fiance is Ghanaian. He too has had a ridiculous amount of trouble getting a visa and has tried twice. As an American unhappy with the treatment of Ghanaians in their visa process I have done all I can to contact people and have things changed, but nothing works. But as upset as you may be (and rightly so!) please remember that the people of a country are not the same as the government of a country.