The above captioned article was published in today's Dailynews in Sri Lanka and you can view the full article at http://www.dailynews.lk/2007/09/27/news15.asp .
I guess this news may give a smile to our faces as I guess most of the contributors to this blog are looking for dual citizenship. But my intention of posting this article here or bringing this to your attention is not give you a good news.
Actually president has made this statement at a Sri Lankan gathering in New York while his visit to UN assembly. According to the article "The expatriates pointed out that they were keen to respond to the President's earlier call to Lankans living abroad to assist the country's development process. However, the high rates charged by the Lankan immigration authorities for the dual citizenship procedure was a stumbling block, they said".
What is this “high charges”? Actually I am not sure the fee for this, but I believe this is not more than $5,000 for a family unit.
Do you guys think it is too high to pay to obtain the citizenship of your own country? No body charged you to give you the citizenship at your birth and you lost it simply because you wanted a citizenship of another country to fulfill your personal goals. Interestingly they have mentioned that by giving the citizenship to them, Sri Lanka can use their skills and knowledge in the country instead of using the foreign consultants. My question is,
Would they come back to Sri Lanka to work after obtaining citizenship?
Even if they come, would they like to work at the salary paid to an ordinary Sri Lankan without complaining?
My answer is definitely no. They will not come to Sri Lanka; this will be an opportunity for them to obtain dual citizenship without much effort or rather will make similar to buy another suite from their favorite shop.
If they come, they will demand the same salary or at least closer to that. So basically they will use this as a break from their current jobs and to have a luxury life in Sri Lanka for some time and salaries will be repatriated to their usual bank accounts.
So do you guys think that it is worth to reduce the fee? I’m not talking about how much it worth to our wallets. My genuine idea is government should increase it annually and charge more. Sri Lanka should not be a victim of creating prestige for expatriates by giving them dual citizenship at a lower price.
If you were ready to pay to obtain a citizenship of another country by paying, you should be ready to pay more than what you paid for that to regain your citizenship in Sri Lanka. Because what we are doing at the moment , we do on the base of what we acquired in Sri Lanka.
My personal opinion is, by reducing the fee; Sri Lanka can not invite the expatriates. That is not the barrier for them to come back to Sri Lanka.
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4 comments:
Good argument man. totally agreed.
But reducing fee will be helpful for ppl who's looking to apply as a family, cos' thats gonna cost a lot. Anyway as u said having dual citizenship doesn't mean that they gonna be back to work for the motherland unless for some big $$.
Anyway I'm planing to apply for the dual citizenship, wondering should I wait...
I dont think he will reduce it, it will become another promise , Thats all I guess.
My personal instinct is that government should find out the causes for people to move out from the country and gain citizenship in foreign land.
I suggest SL government should reduce the fee to be equal to other developing countries in the world and obviously lower than the developed countries. As an example Australia charges only AU$ 135 and compared to that SL's charge of AU$ 2000 is a ripper. SL can increase the fee if the country achives a developed state in the future.
It is very clear and government should not pay some more money to so-called” Foreign Consultants” to find out the reason for people going out and obtain citizenship in foreign countries.
As all of us doing, it is for our personal benefit and we would like t justify it in different ways. I think the above commenter also knows the reason and he wants government to find the reason as it will give a nice picture with justifications for leaving the country.
Few reasons I can say, war, economic instability, political instability, lack of law and order…and many more.
So if it is the reason better not ask for the citizenship again. Sri Lanka should not be ready to sell the citizenship for $135. and my dear friend who took the citizenship for $ 135 , don’t forget the $1750 or what ever the amount you paid for your residency, couple of hundred thousand rupees you paid to your migration agents etc etc… and if it is $2,000 is too much to obtain a citizenship in a developing country , better not to obtain it. And bout achieving the developed nation, I’m pretty sure you never wish Sri Lanka to achieve that status, because as long as country remain poor you can get done all your work in Sri Lanka with few hundred dollars.
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