The great exodus from Nepal - a dodgy affair

Visitor at the ECAN fair gets brochures from a visa consultant firm.

First a little background, bear with me now. If you've been to Nepal recently, you'll already know it: Everybody here is looking for a way out of the country! If not for themselves, then for their son or brother. So many people I've met have been asking me questions about how to get a visa and a job in Europe. Or 'America', which often just means 'all those rich fairy tale countries far away from here'. People are fed up with the unemployment and the largely nepotistic ways of landing a decent job around here. It's all understandable, as even a fairly respectable job in Kathmandu these days rarely pays more than 5000 rupees a month. That's about 50 euro's. If they can just get a measly job in Europe, they can easily make 10 or 20 times that. So of course many people are eager to start afresh in another country, in the lands of opportunities. That said, there's a thing or two that I feel I need to say because by now, it has turned into a complete craze around here.

First of all, you don't just get the visa, go there and start making money. You've got to possess some skills, meet some people, get contacts, learn the language, get set up with a place to stay and so on. And then, maybe, you'll start making some money. But typically, you've already invested about 10.000 euro's for the opportunity and now you have one year before your visa expires. Better start working hard, bhai!

But OK, many of you guys decide to take the chance and go anyway, and that's cool with me if you know what you're doing. But do you really? Along with this great exodus from Nepal, a horde of opportunists have emerged, offering their consultancy services for some humble fee of, say, a couple of years normal wages in this country. Hoarding boards and newspaper adds all sing the same songs of praise for the great VISA CONSULTANTS. And here comes my point: If you need a consultant to fill out a school registration and a visa application, do you really think that you are ready to make it big-time in a foreign country? Because I don't! Getting the visa is the least of your worries. But still, the visa consultants thrive. Yesterday I was at the opening of the ECAN fair, a trade show of about a hundred of the most reputable visa consultants here. The 'EC' in ECAN stands for 'Education Consultants', but it's all about getting a visa to go abroad, the visa normally being a student visa with some limited working permit included. Anyways, they expected no less than 150.000 visitors over the next few days! Later that day, as part of the same little assignment I was on, I went to a meeting at the ministry of finance where it came out that there's about, that same number, 150.000 unskilled workers going overseas for work each year, and the trend is on the rise. Comes out to something like one jumbo-jet, filled to the brim Nepali-style, every day. It's big business. Nepal's economy survives mainly on the remittances sent home by all these people. According to the Asian Development Bank, 12% of the entire income of the country is based on these remittances. Far more than, say, tourism, which I think is about 3-4%.

But leaving the macro-side of things again, there's a whole side of that business that's rather dodgy. Last week, somebody called me and started talking about how I had promised to help them obtaining a Canadian visa. I couldn't remember them and also couldn't quite believe that I had promised something like that since I'm not Canadian and have never even been to the country. But they had all my personal details like name, phone number, email address and such, so to clear things up, I went to meet them. Turned out to be a trivial case of identity theft. Somebody had used my name in an attempt to lure some money from these gullible guys. I didn't pursue the matter any further, but it's scary to know that somebody is out there using my name for their dodgy little schemes. Could be worse, though. Another incident, almost 2 years ago now, but quite interesting. One of my friends runs a little Kathmandu newspaper, and they were doing an exposure on one of these dodgy enterprises. One morning, the entrepreneur turned up in the editorial office with a bribe for burrying the story. My friend didn't take the bribe, his moral standards being impeccable (or the bribe being too small!) so the dodgy guy left, but only to come back in the afternoon with his goons, and they stabbed one of the staffers with a knife in his guts, pure mafia-style! Newspaper still ran the exposure, though. Way to go Shram!

All right, so what to make of all this? I just thought that I'd bring it up here, since it is one of the lesser known facts abroad, and it's important to a lot of people around here. At the same time, it gives a good picture of how things work and just how desperate some people are to get away from here. But don't hold any illusions, please. My feeling is that a lot of Nepalis would do themselves a favour if they stopped dreaming about 'America' and started pursuing some original ideas or taking on some honest hard labour right here in Nepal. Quit sitting around all day complaining about the lack of opportunities. It's a lot easier said than done, I know. But money doesn't fall from the sky, not even in 'America'.

PS: Come to think of it, they almost do in my birth country, Denmark. But you need to be Danish to catch'em!

PPS: If any of you Nepali readers have some experience with living abroad, or with the visa consultant sector, I'd appreciate it if you would share them with me and the rest of the world, right here in the comments field.

Namasté.