Fight the Government, Get a Residence Visa

Foreign FARC guerrillas may soon have these.

The news that as part of the FARC guerrillas' peace deal with the government, foreigners in the rebels' ranks will be able to get Colombian residence visas is sure to frustrate many of us foreigners here. After all, we suffered thru round after round of red tape and paperwork, as well as paying fee after fee, to obtain and renew our Colombian visas, before finally obtaining an 'indefinite visa' after 5 years' continuous residence.

Of course, during all that time we had to stay on the right side of the law, and can lose the visa because of criminal misconduct.

So, it seems very unfair that people who have spent years aiding and abetting, if not actually participating in, severe crimes like extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking and even murder, will be awarded visas just because those crimes were supposedly committed for a political purpose - to overthrow that same government which will now award them a visa.

Of course, it's questionable how many foriegn ex-FARC guerrillas will actually want to live in Colombia. After all, their fight was to turn Colombia into a socialist 'paradise', but the country remains decidedly capitalist.

The media estimates there are about 20 foreigners in the FARC, from Europe and other Latin

Tanja Nijmeijer, Dutch citizen and FARC member.

American nations. The most famous of those is Dutch citizen Tanja Nijmeijer, who was part of the guerrillas' negotiating team in Havana, Cuba.

But this absurdity is just one of the smallest of many prices Colombia is paying in order to, hopefully, move closer to peace.

Afterthought: As arbitrary and infuriating as Colombia's visa process is, it was nothing compared to that in Bolivia, where I had to visit the visa office on a near-daily basis for nearly a year, getting everything signed in triplicate and paying notaries and lawyers for this, that and everything. When I finally got my work visa, my job had already ended. More intelligent people just crossed the border every few months, or paid a bribe and got their visa immediately.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Tanja's Visa Troubles

The FARC negotiating team. Tanya is on the right,
holding a sheet of paper.

Tanja is a young Dutch woman who joined the FARC guerrillas in 2002 and is now a part of their bargaining team in Havana, Cuba.

As the only foreigner and one of few women among the negotiaters, Tanja is something of a star - and also a target. Members of ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe's right-wing Centro Democratico Party are attacking Tanja because, of all things, she doesn't have a valid Colombian residency visa.

Now, will someone please tell me what's surprising about this? After all, Tanja, who is 36 and whose last name is Nijmeijer, has spent the last dozen years living in Colombia's mountains and jungles - where the Foreign Ministry has no visa paperwork offices. And, during that time, she was on the run from Colombia's military, which was trying to kill her and her companions with bombs, M-16s and helicopter gunships. All that didn't leave much time for government paperwork.

Besides that, Tanja belongs to a terrorist organization which rejects the legitimacy of the Colombian government and wants to replace it with a socialist state. In the very best of circumstances, would she be likely to ask that government for a visa?

Getting my visa renewed was a tremendous headache, as it is for many foreigners in Colombia. (But, for whatever it's worth, Colombia's visa bureaucracy wasn't 1/100th as bad as Bolivia's.) Given a choice between repeated trips to the visa office - to endure long waits for surly service from bureaucrats who kept changing the rules on me and then charged me for that privilege - and fleeing from helicopter gunships in the jungle, I might very well choose the second. Well, not really. But I'd be tempted.

In any case, if Tanja DID have a visa, that'd be a real sign of trouble, because it would mean that some functionary was not doing their job by issuing visas to lawbreakers - probably in exchange for a nice bribe.

Uribe's Centro Democratico party is a harsh critic of the peace negotiations in Havana and they're wielding this visa issue as a new weapon. There are plenty of solid reasons to reject the FARC's legitimacy as a peace partner: the massacres, kidnappings, child recruitment, narcotrafficking, forced displacement and many other crimes they've committed. A government willing to look past terrorism shouldn't wory about a lapsed visa.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours