Aussie Visa Close to Impossible

THERE is a country manager of an Australian NGO who has been refused entry to Australia on account that she once contracted tuberculosis.
After the compulsory six-month medication, she was cleared by several doctors as cured in 2005.
Since then, she has travelled on many occasions to or through Australia to the rest of the world many times. Of course, travel always followed stringent tests and checks but she has no qualms about that.
Then, on or about last October, she hit a snag.
Instead of the usual microscopic culture tests that are standard and available in Papua New Guinea, Australian immigration asked for genes test for tuberculosis which can only be
done in Australia.
For both holiday and duty travel, she has been refused a visa and her medical bills for the exclusive purpose of obtaining a visa has blown to K1,600. She still has not travelled.
If this were an isolated case, we would make no song and dance about it. Every country has a primary obligation to protect its citizens from any disease and TB, while curable, can be costly to contain once airborne.
But it seems the poor lady is not alone. Other Papua New Guineans with far less dangerous health case histories are also facing
tremendous difficulties gaining entry visas to Australia.
So much so that the matter has been raised at a number of forums, the latest being a symposium at Geelong University, Victoria.
PNG opposition leader Dame Carol Kidu said there were far too many processes that PNG citizens were forced to go through to obtain a visa.
She related the story of a Papua New Guinean woman married to an Australian who had applied for a visa and still waiting three years on.
Other prominent Papua New Guineans who attended the symposium said they also faced similar difficulties obtaining visas.
When a complaint is raised with the high commission in Port Moresby, the standard reply is that immigration is separate from other affairs of the mission and that immigration answers to Canberra or some such excuse.
Quite clearly, this is not some isolated incident or the action of one or a couple of hardworking immigration officers who might have woken up on the wrong side of the bed one day.
It would seem as if there is some unannounced policy which drives the immigration department.
One would hate to think that this was directed at only Papua New Guinea and no other country.
If such were the case, we would find that very worrying.
It raises the specter of the 1960s policy of a “white Australia” where even though Papuans were legally Australian citizens, those whose parents were of pure Papuan stock could not travel to or reside in Australia.
Of course, there can be a lot of other reasons why Australia should be wary of PNG.
Australian perception of PNG as a place of high incidences of crime and of a growing HIV/AIDs problem could lead to stricter, if unannounced, conditions of entry to be placed on Papua New Guineans.
A higher than usual number of Papua New Guineans residing in Australia illegally could equally lead to greater precautions.
Still, after all these years of support and friendship, the restrictions appear most strange. If anything, PNG deserves an explanation.
The long lines in the blazing sun outside the Australian High Commission snaking right out onto the main road on many days are worrisome.
Conversely, Australians who travel in the other direction – to Papua New Guinea – have far easier access than would most other citizens of the world.
Under PNG’s revised and revitalised immigration procedures, Australians can now obtain visas in Canberra, Sydney, Cairns and even at the Jackson International Airport upon arrival in PNG.
The other quite obvious question to ask is of Papua New Guineans themselves: Why struggle to travel to a country which does
not seem to want your presence?
Why not travel to Singapore or Malaysia or even New Zealand?
And, above all, why not return the favour and explain it away that PNG immigrations operates under a quite separate authority?