Home » Tourism: How Countries use Travel restrictions for Diplomatic l ends as India Suspends Visas for Canadian Citizens

Tourism: How Countries use Travel restrictions for Diplomatic l ends as India Suspends Visas for Canadian Citizens

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India has joined the growing list of countries resorting to the suspension of visa services for certain tourists amid diplomatic disputes.

This tactic of using visa restrictions as a diplomatic lever is becoming increasingly prevalent on the international stage.

According to telegraph.co.uk, In June, Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Niijar was killed by two masked gunmen in British Columbia, Canada. Justin Trudeau, the country’s prime minister, has since said there is “credible” intelligence suggesting India was behind the murder – sparking a diplomatic war between the two nations.

This has led to India suspending visa services for Canadian citizens, making tourists an unwitting, if powerful, part of the international row.

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It isn’t the first time the nation has used travellers as a pawn. During the pandemic, India, like most nations, closed its borders to foreign travellers. By February 2022, this decision was reversed, and its popular eVisa scheme – which allows holidaymakers to visit using a less arduous online registration system – was reinstated. Over 150 countries were eligible for the document, but people from the UK were excluded for a further nine months. Officials at the time claimed that it was retaliation for the perceived difficulty of access for Indian visitors to Britain.

Imposing entry restrictions is clearly a powerful gesture. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, the author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen, says it is a clear way to register discontent. “Unfortunately, it affects ordinary people who want to travel. So it’s really a way of inflicting pain on ordinary citizens,” she says.

READ: News: South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe among the top 10 nations granted work Permits in 1st Quarter of 2023 by Ireland, as India leads

The current row between India and Canada will affect a significant number of people – some 80,000 Canadians visited India in 2021, behind only the US, Bangladesh and the UK. Around 1.4 million people with Indian heritage live in Canada, according to a census taken in the same year.

This sort of action isn’t without precedent. During the Cold War, Americans were banned from visiting the Soviet Union until the death of Stalin in 1953, while Soviet citizens were also restricted from travelling to the US. More recently, the US has placed restrictions on travellers who have been to Cuba, with Donald Trump adding the Caribbean island to a list of ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’, alongside North Korea, Iran and Syria. It means those who have been to the island since the decision can no longer officially travel to the US under the Esta visa-waiver scheme. Instead, they must apply for a B-2 visa in order to visit the States; a much more lengthy, and expensive, process.

It remains a headache for any traveller who has a stamp from Cuba in their passport – a country that welcomed nearly 4.3 million tourists in 2019. Prior to the Cuba decision, in 2017, the President enacted what was dubbed in the media a “Muslim ban”, blocking those with passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the USA. It was described as a “licence to discriminate” by Amnesty International, eventually being overturned by the Supreme Court in 2020.

Still in force is a long-standing ban on holders of Israel passports, enforced by 13 Muslim-majority countries: Algeria, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. Furthermore, six of these countries — Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Yemen – do not allow entry to people with evidence of travel to Israel. For this reason, Israeli authorities typically stamp a separate piece of paper, rather than visiting travellers’ passports.

China too has in recent years wielded travel restrictions as a political weapon. Palau, a South Pacific nation previously popular with Chinese tourists, has refused to give up diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Its stance prompted China in 2017 to order its tour operators to stop selling package tours to Palau.

There is an economic risk to limiting tourists. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that in 2022, the travel sector contributed around seven per cent to global GDP, and accounted for 22 million new jobs worldwide. International tourists spent nearly £16 billion in India in 2021.

Like Trump, India claims its actions are motivated by the issue of security. Trudeau has said that the murder was an “unacceptable violation of Canada’s sovereignty”, with India responding that the incident represents a potential threat to their own nation. The security claim here is complicated somewhat by the Overseas Citizenship of India card, which grants Indian nationals who live outside of India lifetime entry to the country. Christopher Endy, a professor of History at California State University, says: “Canadians who’re interested in New Age spirituality, who have really no interest in politics, the Eat Pray Love tourist, will be impacted the most.”

Katerina Antoniou, an academic who researches the political impact of tourism, agrees. “Just because people are citizens of a state, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are state representatives,” she says. “It’s really hard to say which of these [potential visitors] are representative of their state’s position, and which are here to escalate tensions, and who are here to promote peace and essentially, you know, be a non-politicised visitor.” A similar issue arose during the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian nationals were largely unable to move around Europe – but some travel bloggers from the country said that the blanket ban risked isolating allies within the country.

In India’s case, travel documents have a long-held power. “As Indians got more representation in the British colonial system, one of the things they pushed for is the right to have reciprocal passport relations with other British territories”, says Endy. “I think that the ability to have passports was part of an effort for India to establish status, a sense of equality in the international sphere, and I wonder how that plays out in the Canada-India dispute today?”

It certainly hints that the traveller, far from being leisurely and frivolous, is quietly very powerful. Most do not go on holiday to wade into international disputes – even the most intrepid of getaways are framed as something for pleasure. A survey by Abta, the travel association, found that in 2022, the majority of holidays taken by UK travellers were to the beach (34 per cent), while only seven per cent were described as “adventurous”. And while tourists are keen to take city breaks, a study looking at American travellers found that “visiting cultural and ethnic sites” – the sort of place where one might encounter national politics writ large – was a much lower priority than sightseeing, shopping and fine dining.

Regardless of whether holidaymakers are willing political participants, it seems that visa restrictions might become more common in the future. “Sanctions have been becoming quite popular in recent decades, for the reason that they provide an alternative to state actors from any military action,” says Antoniou. As travel continues to remain cheap, and a possibility for a large number of people, the impact of limiting it will be all the more powerful.

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