Colombian government has a list of countries that need VISA to come to Colombia, in other words, she points World citizens who need VISA to come to Colombia. It sounds discriminatory in these global days where countries work hard to be open to globalization. For instance Colombian government gave free entrance to Chinese in 2006 but after a year she blocked their free entrance due to there were a massive immigration of them (it was about 4,000 Chinese between 2006 and 2007) and illegal activities that government authorities preferred to avoid instead of working on them, from my point of view it was a huge mistake, the benefit to avoid illegal activities due to lazy authorities was low compared with the potential economic benefits lost, it blocked the economic development. As China there are other countries pointed below that deserve to come to colombia without VISA due to potential economic benefits but as must be, local authorities have to work hard on potential illegal activities that come with immigration. Local authorities such as Police Department and migration offices have to start to develop mechanisms to be according with globalization policies, blocking immigration is not an alternative in these globalization days. This result highlight the lack of deep study to point what countries need VISA and the poor government though about globalization, in other words, Colombian government does not have a serious criteria to ask for VISA and its cost will be huge in competitiveness terms.
Author: Humberto Bernal,
Economist,
e-mail: zhumber@gmail.com
Twitter: Humberto_Bernal
100 years ago Colombia started to work on immigration legislation, some important norms were broadcast between 1813 to 1922, Colombian government gave incentives such as wasteland without any charge to foreigner who decided work on colombian lands, moreover government gave monetary support according to family members, the government target was to make more productive the agrarian sector, nevertheless some politicians and some conservative people were interested on avoid immigration to Colombia and it is evidenced through legislation in 1919 where authorities asked for many papers about their health and history about immigrants, fortunately these norms were abolished in 1922. Those who were more favored were people from Western European countries and people from North America due to their economic advances compared with other countries. By those days, unfortunately some politicians and conservative society worked to reduce immigrants from China, Russia, Syria, Japan and other counties, they said that these foreigners brought diseases, the cost of this type of thought and policies was the contribution to low economic development in Colombia. Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay as many others opened their borderlines to foreigners and the results were so different to those in Colombia. After more than 100 years Colombia is not aware of this big mistake, nowadays immigration norms are similar to those on 1919, for instance 53.6% of countries need VISA to come to Colombia and the criteria to ask for a VISA does not have a deep study, it appears it is done by chance. This note shows some issues about nowadays immigration state in Colombia.
Colombian government and local media broadcast the relevance of globalization, for instance Colombia signed Free Trade Agreements with Mexico, North Triangle countries, Canada, USA, Chile and many others but what does Colombia do for improve this globalization?, the answer is few things in terms of immigration. Figure 1 shows World citizens who have to ask for a VISA to come to Colombia (yellow ones). From 206 countries in the World, there is information of 183 where 53.6% have to ask for VISA to come to Colombia, what sad and shameless indicator for a country that broadcasts the global and economic openness.
Figure 1. Citizens who most ask for VISA to visit Colombia
Source: Colombian Department of Foreign Affairs.
Moreover, the the worst thing about this rigid entrance to Colombia is the absence of a deep study that shows why these citizens have to ask for VISA to come to Colombia. Nevertheless, I tray to find explications about this issue and the results were disappointed: Colombia ask for VISA for those citizens who show low income, low education, lack of job opportunities in their home country and some cases there is no reason such as citizens from United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Bahrein. These results came from formal Probit Model where depend variable was zero (0) if citizens (country) do not need VISA to come to Colombia and one (1) if they need VISA, the independent variables were Gross Domestic Product Per capita under PPP theory, corruption index, foreign residents in Colombia, tertiary education index and unemployment rate, all of these indicators are classed by country. Figure 2 shows the relation between probability of need a VISA (Pro= 1) and GDP per capita, one realizes that as citizens have high income, then Colombian government does not ask for a VISA.
Figure 2. Relation probability and GDP per capita
(VISA: Pro = 1; No VISA Pro = 0)
Ln[...]: Natural Logarithm.
Source: Own calculations under World Bank data and Colombia Bureau Of Statistics.
From this work, results shows a group of countries that deserve to come to Colombia without VISA due to they are similar to countries which do not need VISA, they are those in figure 3: China, Qatar, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Mauritius and Ukraine, the reason to select these countries was they have similar value of independent variables in the Probit Model (similar probability of those that do not need VISA), in other words, GDP-per capita, education, unemployment, corruption are similar of countries that do not need VISA to come to Colombia. Of course this type of immigration policy has to come with a strong security program led by Police Department, economic development has driven costs if government is aware of it .
Figure 3. Countries which deserve No VISA to come to Colombia
(According to Probit model)
Source: Own calculations under World Bank data and Colombia Bureau Of Statistics.
The unfair immigration policy in Colombia is evidenced with Chinese people, in 2006 colombian government gave free entrance to Chinese people who wanted do tourism and business but in 2007 they abolished this norm due to high immigration and illegal activities such as traffic of people. Government took the easy exit through asking VISA to Chinese but the cost from this decision will be faced in future economic development, most of Chinese people are hard working and creative, of course there are exceptions that local authority has to deal through high quality job. This decision from my point of view was taken due to lazy authorities to do their proper job, hopefully it could be sorted through right government decisions.
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