Wednesday 23 February 2011

Work Visa

Tourist visas are fundamentally cooler than work visas. A work visa declares that you are a wage-slave, while a tourist visa says that you are – not to put too fine a point on it – a tourist.

Having said that, descriptions on work visas are generally quite flattering. Mine, for instance, is a UK Tier 2 work visa, which means that I am “a skilled worker who fills a gap in the workforce that cannot be filled by a settled worker.”

But I got a Japan work visa yesterday, and it is so inconceivably cool that it makes gap-filling skilled workers look pedestrian. It says that I am a – wait for it – Specialist in Humanities/International Services. That’s right! A Specialist in Humanities-slash-International frikkin’ Services. And if that were not enough, I am authorised to “engage in service, which requires knowledge pertinent to jurisprudence, economics, sociology or other human science fields or to engage in service which requires specific ways of thought or sensitivity based on the experience with foreign culture.”

What I will in fact be doing in Tokyo is securitising the hell out of everything and helping rich companies get richer. But the visa makes me sound like a paragon of rectitude and goodness, reforming economies and defending human rights and generally spreading light and joy. It almost makes me want to live up to that ideal, but somehow I suspect I may not have it in me.

The least I could do is to dedicate my blog, such as it is, to the service of mankind. And here I am, writing a post where I essentially do nothing else but gloat about a visa.

4 comments:

Shrabasti Banerjee said...

Hahahaha. Sroyon Mukherjee: Law graduate slash social engineer slash specialist in Humanities/International services slash securitizationer(?). Good lord!

Tommy said...

The USA has an immigration category "aliens with extraordinary ability"; see INA § 203(b)(1)(A).

Sroyon said...

@Shrabasti: Yes, all of the above.

@Tommy: Now I want one of those.

Anasua Deb said...

no wonder they arranged for you that bicycle slot and designed it with that much of details!!

And the US visa for "aliens with extra-ordinary ability" probably demands you to be at the least a noble laureate! go bag one and make us proud. :)