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签证就是一个国家两个部门之间的协调产物：旅游局和安全局。
在很多情况下，政府不是简化办理签证的程序，而是把整个签证办理都外包给私人公司。游客除了要给签证的申请费外，还需要付给代办公司手续费。如果需要享受贵宾服务、短信提醒、快递服务，那游客还需要付一笔费用。
# Travel Visas :A strange sort of welcome#
The 26 European countries with a common visa policy—the “Schengen group” —require tourists from India and other developing countries to provide several months' worth of bank statements and pay slips. Visitors to Britain often have to fill in a ten-page application form, including details of every trip abroad for the past ten years. Business travelers to India must provide two references.
In many cases, instead of simplifying the visa process, governments have offloaded it to private contractors. Travelers may now have to pay a service fee to the company handling their application on top of the standard visa fee. The biggest firm in this growing business is VFS Global, which is part of Kuoni, a Swiss tourism company. Starting from a single premise in Mumbai in 2001, handling applications for American visas, VFS now has more than 1,900 visa centers in 124 countries, processing paperwork for 48 governments. Until VFS opened its Mumbai office, applicants had to queue for an average of five hours in the sweltering heat outside the American consulate. After the job was handed to the contractor, the typical waiting time fell to one hour.
However, applicants still have no choice but to submit to whatever petty demands contractors make—such as, say, banning them from using mobile phones while they sit waiting for their appointments. If the staffs are rude, the queues are badly managed or the “extras” extravagantly priced, travelers can hardly take their business elsewhere. The application-processing firms are profiting both from travelers’ lack of choice and from governments' failure to consider the economic damage caused by their visa requirements.
- 参考译文
拥有统一签证政策的26个欧洲国家，即“申根国”，要求来自印度和其他发展中国家的旅行者提供数月的银行对账单和工资单。去英国旅行的人通常得填写十页的申请表，包括过去十年每次出国旅行的详细情况。去印度的商务旅行者必须提供两份推荐信。
很多时候，政府并未简化签证流程，而是把它转交给私营承包机构。现在，除了标准的签证费，旅行者可能还需要向处理申请的公司支付一笔服务费。在这个不断增长的行业中，最大的公司是VFS Global，它是瑞士旅游公司瑞士旅业集团的子公司。2001年VFS从位于孟买的一个单一办理机构起家，处理美国签证申请，现在它在124个国家设有1900多个签证中心，为48个政府处理签证材料。VFS在孟买开设分公司之前，申请人要顶着酷暑在美国领事馆外排平均五个小时的队。这项工作转交承包机构之后，一般的等候时间减至一小时。
但是申请人除了接受承包机构的各项要求之外仍然别无选择，无论这些要求多麽琐碎，例如，不准在等待面谈时使用手机。即便工作人员粗鲁无礼，队伍排得乱七八糟，或者“额外费用”高昂，旅行者也难有其他选择。签证申请处理公司从两个方面获利：一是旅行者缺乏选择，二是政府没能考虑到签证要求造成的经济损失。
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