The current issue of visa restriction further worries us after the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Tuesday threatened to “limit visas” to Europe for travellers from Bangladesh if there was no action by Dhaka on irregular migrants. Question automatically arise, what’s our diplomatic missions in countries like Italy, Germany, Greece doing? Apart from our embassies we also mark a clear lackadaisical attitude among our high-ups in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in this regard.
Had our embassies in Europe taken planned and calculative measures to bring back the hundreds of illegal migrants those reached Europe illegally crossing the Mediterranean shores this threat wouldn’t have come in our way. Though Bangladesh is reported to have voiced its firm position on bringing “all the people in irregular situation back”, but a number of European diplomats said Dhaka had been making long delay to conclude the negotiations on the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on the return of irregular migrants from the EU. Moreover, following the Joint Commission meeting between the EU and Bangladesh on July 12 in Brussels, the EU warned Bangladesh to end the negotiations on the SOPs by the end of this month. There is little time at hand and our concerned ministry and diplomats should act fast.
Earlier, at the Joint Commission meeting, the EU alleged that Bangladesh has long been making “unnecessary” delay in the name of nationality verification and had asked to complete the verification within 48 hours. However, according to the sequence of events the responsibility of verification goes to the Home Ministry and there is a common feeling that the law enforcing agencies took longer to verify the individual’s nationality. This unnecessary bureaucratic procedural obstacle and red-tape must be right away removed. More to it, verifying national identity is not a difficult task. Given a proper set of checklists and identification methodology our embassy officials are enough to carry out the task abroad.
