Must a visit to the United Kingdom cost the Ghanaian that much? My first experience with the work of High Commissions and embassies in Ghana was when my younger sister’s first summer Holidays in the United Kingdom. The little girl had gone through the online application provided by the British High Commission as simple as it is in the beginning, I thought this is holidays should be for everyone, be it the English woman coming to Ghana or the average Ghanaian going anywhere in the world provided he or she can provide. I liken the issue of immigration and acquiring a simple visa with your own money to another country to a Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin racial issue and to be seriously contested by the people of Ghana. I initially read from some pundits and online news sites that it was a clear issue of the laws and the laying of evidence by the prosecution and not because Trayvon was black. But on hearing the President add his voice, and saying he would have been Trayvon over 35 years ago, got me thinking, Trayvon was profiled, he was black shot by a white-man but indeed, If he was white would he have been profiled or shot by Zimmerman? My case is the way we treated as blacks or people who need to be overly scrutinised to be trusted. My sister was arrested at the Heathrow airport and held for well over 4 hours until I called the Heathrow Immigration Terminal 4 from Ghana to check on a young girl in their custody before they decided to take my details and my parents for them to call back and thereafter letting her go. Many Ghanaians are subjected to that, some are returned on getting to the airport and the lucky ones are let to go into the United Kingdom. I however do not seek to say people on suspicion should not be checked, but I strongly think they the BHC in Ghana is treating majority of us with disrespect. I happily went online to fill a simple application form for a visit to the United Kingdom on my vacation, but that was just a tip of the major frustration one goes through to travel outside. The VFS-Global service at La-bone is where you submit the forms, you get there to a fairly long queue and staff who somehow rude, they flip through documents and ask all manner and sort of questions as if you getting a ticket to heaven. On the 2 occasions, their printer was not working and they had to go print at the other desk for the Australian visa section, after going through all that and sometimes the disrespect you leave meeting a descent staff amongst the very rude ones who sit and receive your forms, who will give you a smile, these are usually the security and the ladies who give you forms to fill on their services. I had attached the normal documents a student will add from my school, I did not add my savings because as a student being sponsored, I did not know what property or account had to do with it, my host had sent a letter inviting me with her bills and financial documents. My sponsor, being my mother added her letter of sponsorship, her pay slips, property documents she owned, her office was clearly known because she stated where she worked and ID cards as a staff of the ministry of interior. It could simply be verified. With all contact details stated, the High Commission found it needless to contact within the 3 week period. Getting a text message after the 14-day period is commendable, with the volume of work I think they do well. Going back for the decision, made me sad with the seat and treatment you get at the VFS-Global, simply because submitting visa forms is different from collection. Applicants are made to sit under a tent close to their car park on benches, on my two visits to the place, I had to get up few times for elderly women to sit down, or just tell young people close to me to stand and give their seats to the elderly left at the mercy of the scorch sun. On reading some of these decisions, you will have no option to gut and blurts at the reasons, which I think is quite nonsensical and forfeits the stand made by the High Commissioner that each application is weighed on its merit Reasons for my refusal in the first were that nothing showed my sponsor is employed, and that some income in the account is inconsistent with their salary as well as no proof my sponsor was in receipt of regular salary, the rest so shameful for print. I however, taking notice of the points decided to re-apply and rebut the inconsistence, interestingly, had another refusal but with one reason that the sponsor has kids to take care of and because of that they are refusing the visa. I wondered how someone who has stated they are in the position to sponsor and has prepared over a year to provide the trip and the fact that the sponsor has sponsored someone earlier on was overlooked but to say if money in your account at a time is less or not thrice your stated spending budget then you have to be refused. With my experience, I think these embassies put themselves in a ready position to refuse people rather than weighing the merit and the cultural and social setting of where they work. For me, do the many Europeans who flood this country have that money in their accounts before coming here? Will a citizen of the United States be asked to pay 3000 pounds before getting entry into the United Kingdom? On getting to their site, a new rule, the appeal opportunity granted to general visitors has been scrapped and one has to re-apply again and again to get a common entry to just visit London. Why must one subject him or herself to that complete security detail, of taking pictures, papers of almost everything you have to be given a visa and almost most of these documents are not returned. Just because there are international laws guiding these organisations in Ghana, we as a country are not in the position to challenge them. I stand with every Ghanaian to call for a change, they can't treat us this way. The chorus by many Ghanaians against the three thousand pounds was not my problem, because I did not care, randomly one day deciding to get a visa and visit London like any other individual in the world, like the sometimes many pale human beings who flood our streets, smoke, mess around in the country. Africa must rise up, Ghana must rise up, and we as a people must change the way we think, for the white man still is enslaving us, so I join Manasseh Azure to say that with one voice we can cause a change. I have decided to get a visa to a good African country next time to relax, pending a review sent to the High Commission.