Foreigners fail to adhere to visa regulations after info gets lost in translation

Source: Traveller24, 31/12/2015

Cape Town – Foreign tourists who have been rejected coming into South
African say there is no way for them to acquire the necessary visas
for minors, as these documents simply do not exist in their countries.

To make matters worse, these travellers say they are, or were,
completely unaware that they didn`t have the right documentation going
to the airport, as they followed the necessary steps as best they could.

Paul van der Bosch contacted Traveller24 following a report of
confused travellers who had trouble with the controversial visa
regulations.

The new visa regulations, aimed at curbing child trafficking, at first
ask for all minors to travel with unabridged birth certificates.

Following public outcry and a worrisome drop in SA tourism, the visa
regulations were amended for foreigners.

After a request by the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) task team –
established to investigate the effects of SA`s controversial
immigration regulations - in October this year, Cabinet approved that
the term "unabridged birth certificate" may be replaced with the term
"birth certificate containing parental details" for foreign travellers.

But in the midst of this confusion, travellers are having their SA
holidays held up.

Dutch citizen Paul van den Bosch is one of these travellers. Van den
Bosch is married to a South African, and has two Dutch children from a
previous marriage.

Before coming to SA, Van den Bosch says he had acquired "all documents
long before time".

But a gap in translation, from English to Dutch, saw them being denied
boarding at the airport.

This is what Paul van den Bosch told Traveller24:

"We and 10 other children were rejected from boarding because our
consent wasn`t verified by a notary of the municipality. Later I
understood that this is a definition of an affidavit. That maybe
logical in SA or the UK, but it just is completely unknown anywhere else!
"We were rejected by a rule no one knew and no one even could have
foreseen. Even now it`s impossible for a municipality [in the
Netherlands], where I live, to stamp my consent; it`s just something
that does-not-exist here, period.

"So there we were with crying children, holding up the flight. KLM
(our airline) did help us a bit, we could use next day`s flight, but
this was the worst travel-experience ever. This has so much negativity
for SA as a tourist attraction.
"Everyone saying `well, those are the rules` - and we heard a lot of
them say that - they did not realize the communication is so extremely
bad, maybe specially for non-English speaking countries with the
language barrier and the non-written procedures that exist in a country."

Van den Bosch says they were eventually allowed to fly, but predicts
that if the regulations aren't changed, "the effects on the tourist
industry and the global view SA will be downhill".

Tourism authority Holger Krogsgaard Jensen from Jensen Safaris says
many of their clients have the same problem. Most recently, he says, a
family of five was refused boarding at Hamburg Airport, in spite of
bringing the original documents to the airport.

This was because in Scandinavia, from where most of Jensen Safaris`
clients originate, the State Church, and not the government, issue
birth certificates.

Jensen wrote the following to Traveller24:

"The visa regulations remain a nightmare – we`ve had several guests
off-loaded at huge cost to both us and our clients. Now that the
decision has been taken to scrap the regulations, one cannot
understand why it was not implemented before the busy Christmas
season, when thousands of travellers bring their children.

"The restrictions on children under 18 could be scrapped with the
stroke of a pen. Instead it is now left to individual check-in staff
members to implement this impossible piece of legislation, which sows
confusion every day.
"No other country has something called an "unabridged birth
certificate". If a client from a non-English speaking country, for
example, tries to get a translation on the internet, it will say a
"government-issued birth certificate", but many countries do not issue
such documents.

Department of Home Affairs spokesperson Mayihlome Tshwete told
Traveller24 the DHA cannot answer generalized requests as to why
certain people travelling with minors are not allowed entry into South
Africa, and will handle all cases individually.