Are Visa and Residence Permit Going to be things of the past?

Courtesy of sbs.com.au

Let me first clarify the title. With the world is becoming more divisive, with the rise of alt-right ultra nationalist politics, it is nonsensical to even bring up the idea of visa and residence permit abolition. Certainly, this topic would have been more relevant six to eight years ago - where everyone had thought that capitalist liberalism with its free market had reached an equilibrium. People thought that the world had voluntarily and happily become one - globalized, interconnected and countries are dependent on one another. It still is the case today but the voluntary and happy sides have been upended. Little that we know that there are people out there who resent world's interconnectedness by making nationalistic propaganda, sovereignty rhetoric and anti-foreignness. Because of these new phenomena, the very idea of visa and residence permit abolition are left in the air.

 

No. This article is not going to talk about the abolition of visa and residence permit in a political sense. Obviously, there is no sign that this will ever happen in the near future. What I wanted to talk about in this article is about the practice of attaching physical visa in your passport page and getting a residence permit once you arrive in the country. This practice seems to have been slowly removed from our traveling experience.

 

Having acquired visas and residence permits to live in two countries (Turkey and Romania) before, I naturally thought that I had to go through the same process to live in Australia. In turns out that, although you still have to go through the same process, you won't find any visa on your passport page. Likewise, once you arrive in Australia, (1) your passport will not be stamped, (2) you are not required to go to the immigration office to process a residence permit. Instead, you get an electronic visa (PDF file) and that's about it.

 

I had a hard time rationalizing this. I thought "well, this is going to be complicated."

 

In my past experiences, you have to bring your residence permit with you every time you leave the house. If you don't have one (because you are in the country on a temporary visa), then you carry your passport with at all times. You never know. Just in case some random police stops you in the street.

 

Now that I am not given a visa nor a residence permit, I thought I would have to carry my passport with me all the time. "This is not very pleasant. What if I drop my passport? It will get me a lot of trouble - for sure."

 

But having lived here for a little over six months, I have yet to experience being stopped on the street and asked to show any form of identification. Although I don't carry my passport around, I do carry my student ID and an ID that I got from the local authority. I guess we can say that the ID I got from the local authority is the equivalent of a residence permit? Well, it is not a compulsory to get it though. But if you want and need one (to buy alcoholic drinks and to get in a bar) - you can get it from them.

 

I don't know what to feel about this. Personally, I like having my travel experience documented in the form of visa and immigration stamps. I mean, I have 30 blank pages or so in my passport. Might as well have them stamped and decorated with visas. But I guess seeing the massive migration to the digital world of almost all aspect of our lives, it is not an impossibility to see a future where the passport book that we now know and have will be replaced with a credit card-like passport. Our movements and data will be easier to be traced, and no more privacy. Ye…!

Courtesy of https://www.accesscanberra.act.gov.au/app/answers/detail/a_id/51/~/proof-of-identity-cards