The grass isn’t green…

…over in the States?

Used to be that cost folks US$12,500 to get a visa for the US. This was what the fella from INSIDE the Embassy – Carroll – charged with his local confederate who now heads the local Guyana-Cuba Friendship Society. After Carroll and his accomplice were both charged, convicted and jailed back in 2000, the movement of bodies to the States handle skipped a beat. A decade later visas – or getting bodies into the states by whichever way possible – were still going for over US$13,000 a pop.

Until two years ago, that is! Suddenly you couldn’t even get someone to fork over US$100!! What happened? The short answer is the bottom dropped out of the market. In international trade, some foreign companies can destroy markets in a country by selling the product below what it even cost them. It’s called “dumping”. For the fellas who couldn’t even practically give away visas, the US Embassy was suddenly “dumping” visas”.

And because it was all done OFFICIALLY – not like on the side with Carroll – there was nothing they or anyone else could do. Suddenly anyone who walked into the Embassy was not only given a visa – but for “ten year” ones! Word spread like bushfire and folks started coming out of the woodwork – not to mention even from Hicksville – to apply for and receive visas.

Forget the baker, butcher and candle stick maker. Canecutters, watchmen, panhandlers and your mother-in-law could now get visas. Suddenly you were asked by your gardner for “leave” because he, his wife and kids had visas to go Stateside. And their tickets were paid for by his “cousins”.

Well, your Eyewitness’ anecdotal evidence was just confirmed by the new US Ambassador. Last year he revealed, more than 39,000 Guyanese lined up along Duke Street for visas and “more than half” – meaning 20,000 at least – got the lucky stamp.

The Ambassador allowed that only five years ago there were only 6000 applications. So why the explosion? The good, ole southern boy explained it was because “the Guyanese economy has grown over the last few years”!! Well not to take anything away from the PPP that ran Guyana during the said years – with GDP growth rates of 5 per cent annually – but we’re still a “lower middle income country” with only Haiti above us in the Caribbean!

Nah… we gotta look elsewhere. And not far. The effect is actually the cause. It’s simply the US DECIDED suddenly to start giving away visas like hot southern biscuits.

And every Tom, Dick and Harilall now knew they had more than a 60-50 chance of hitting the lotto!!

How sweet it is!!

…over on the West Bank

For decades the “West Bank” has connoted misery and turmoil in the mind of anyone with even the scantiest knowledge of what went on (and down) in the Mid-East. Well, it looks like the government’s determined to create our own “West Bank” in the image of the original. Our “West Bank” of course, is that part of Demerara where Wales is located.

If you want to see a section of Guyana that’s literally a stone throw away from Georgetown where a hundred six-storey buildings are reaching for the skies – but yet mired in poverty and desperation, then you’re talking about the West Bank of Demerara.

178 years after slavery and bitter sugar, the latter isn’t only “King” but it’s the only game in town. And without even deigning to tell the people what’s going down, the government takes away sugar.

All that’s left is the “bitter”.

…with rice either

So it won’t be accused of discriminating, the government’s also leaving rice in the lurch. Nagamootoo took the credit for the record crop last year. But after the one-two sucker punches of loss of the Venezuelan market and the El Niño drought, now it’s “not our business, man”!!