Hacker News Reader

Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

It sucks for Namibia, but I think it’s logical since there are probably way more people in Namibia wanting to visit Canada than people in Canada wanting to visit Namibia.

I remember a story from many years ago where an Indian coworker was complaining that his parents tourist visa to the US got denied again. I thought this was really unjust and I was commiserating with him about why the US would even care. He said “because people come over on a tourist visa from India and never leave.” I said that was ridiculous because it’s limiting tourism and he said “No, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. They’re 75 so they’ll just stay here the rest of their lives. Customs will never actually do anything.”

I think of that every time I read stories like this.

View on HN

Fun fact, entering legally with a valid visa and then overstaying is much more common than an actual illegal border crossing, and doing so is a "civil violation", less than a felony or misdemeanor, and more on the level of a parking ticket.

Definitely. It’s super common. It’s not really sought out either. I understand the penalty is basically “you won’t be ever to come back” and they really only find you if you try to travel internationally or get picked up for something else.

This is how my coworker/friend described it. And why part of why State department makes visas harder for some countries. They know people never leave, they just don’t care. So they can easily see with which countries this is most common.

If your coworker was a US citizen he could just get his parents green cards.

I'm assuming the reason he's not a citizen yet is because the employment green card queue for India is ridiculously backlogged compared to every other country.

Absolutely I know couple of US Americans with long expired visas still in Europe.

I visited Namibia last year, am in Canada today, and do not share your assessment. Not at all.

I have only positive experiences of both countries. But if you all how many people from X will want to visit Y, my guess is that more Canadians visit Namibia then the other way around, by a large factor, and a bit of extra bureaucracy won't be worse than the overnight flight anyway.

Digression alert: an airport security guard in Namibia found a knife that I've carried for almost fifteen years, on countless flights. https://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details/C133/Bug-trade-Stai...

To clarify, Namibia seems beautiful and is a great country. I just meant that the demand levels are different and that the wealth levels are very different between the two countries.

I’d love to visit Namibia. And I expect western tourists to Namibia spend quite a bit more there than Namibian tourists in the West.

theres 2 million namibians, and 40 million canadians, surely that plays a role

Actually 3 million Namibians [0] but I think the biggest differentiator is Namibia’s $4.5k GDP/capita [1] vs Canada’s $53k [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Namibia

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/namibia/gdp

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/can...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com