Passport denied!

This is when they stare at you while squinting and turning the passport around while asking cheeky questions such as “Is the person in this photograph female?” ILLUSTRATION | NATION

What you need to know:

  • This is when they stare at you while squinting and turning the passport around while asking cheeky questions such as “Is the person in this photograph female?”
  • Unfortunately the only thing in nature that produces a flash is some kind of explosion – and human beings are programmed to fear explosions. Is it any wonder, then, that most people display a startled expression in their passport photographs?
  • Sadly the visa officer will not consider the conditions of the photography and will throw out the application without remorse!

The person who decided that people can be recognised from their photographs had not reckoned with the two-by-three-centimetre item known as a passport photograph.

This awful image was designed to create a permanent inferiority complex in the regular traveller.

If you think I am exaggerating, then you probably have never suffered the squint-and-turn treatment from a border control officer.

This is when they stare at you while squinting and turning the passport around while asking cheeky questions such as “Is the person in this photograph female?”

There are very good reasons why the passport photograph is of such bad quality.

The first one is that the photograph is always taken in an artificial setting and therefore requires an artificial burst of light, known as a “flash” to illuminate the subject.

Unfortunately the only thing in nature that produces a flash is some kind of explosion – and human beings are programmed to fear explosions. Is it any wonder, then, that most people display a startled expression in their passport photographs?

SICK WITH FEAR

Fear is a natural and harmless human emotion, so a visa officer is unlikely to reject an application merely because the applicant has been terrified by a small explosion.

However, a good proportion of passport photographees also manage to look shifty.

For some, the shifty look is genuine and probably occurs because they have evaded the long queue at the studio by falsely claiming that they are travelling on a mission to donate a gallstone to a desperately sick relative.

Such people try to look sad and heroic in their photograph, but the shiftiness always seeps through the facade.

However, let us not forget that some people are innocently shifty. I can only sympathise with these unfortunates, whose dishonest expression is artificially induced by numerous, conflicting instructions from the photographer. “Look up!” “Look down!” “Level your head!” “Tilt slightly to one side!” “Tighten your jaw!” “Loosen your lips!”  ... It is not surprising that one looks fit for the gallows after this regimen.

Sadly the visa officer will not consider the conditions of the photography and will throw out the application without remorse!

There are those who anticipate rejection, and are so afraid of the outcome of pasting their passport-ly, uglified image into their passbook that they literally look sick with fear.

This used to work quite well for those who claimed to be travelling abroad for medical treatment, but these days it is a killer. Ebola has become the super-disease – the sickness that stopped a thousand travellers.

Then there are those who look slightly cross-eyed and very evil.

It could be that they have been consorting with demons. However, it is much more likely that they allowed their friends to persuade them into a late-night, farewell pub crawl.

The wages of sin is a puke-worthy photograph and a “Go back home. Go directly back home. Do not pass by a port.” ticket from the visa kings.

CRAZY REQUIREMENT

Finally there are those of us who merely look confused. We do not want to believe that there is someone in the world who does not know us for the sweet and innocent person that we are.

We cannot understand why so many gates, dogs, and multiple documents have been placed between us and our desire to see another country.

So we end up looking confused (and, unfortunately, untrainable, therefore don’t put “education” as your reason for travel!)

And what is this recent crazy requirement that both ears must be visible?

This only works well for the aurally-endowed (usually people from cold climes, who often have enough pinna so that if some freezes off they still will have plenty to listen with.)

And have you ever tried to move artificial hair away from an ear?

You can only do it by manually and continuously pushing it away with your hands, which is a very similar posture to the one adopted by people being threatened with a firearm, and which naturally raises serious doubts in the minds of the employees of the visa section.

Bring on the biometrics this weekend.