LETTER: Outreach experience teaches value of passport

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by Carmen Peralta

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To the editor:

With only about a week to go before 20 Rice students go off to Honduras to help Habitat for Humanity build houses, I was sent to the Honduras Consulate to get a visa to be able to enter the country.

This may not sound like anything major. But it will if I tell you that I was the only student in the group who had to obtain a visa.

Why? Because I don't have a blue passport.

My trip to the Honduras Consulate was a treat compared to the experience in the American Embassy in Bogota, Colombia.

Those of you with a United States passport should probably realize what other people have to go through to enter the United States.

Because I am not a U.S. citizen, the Immigration and Naturalization Service requires that I obtain a visa to enter the country as a student.

During the Christmas holidays, I had to renew it. In order to do so, I had to ask for an appointment at the embassy (which was given to me eight weeks after the day I called).

Then I had to fly to Bogota (the capital) a day before the appointment.

Then, at about 6:30 a.m., as it was freezing cold, I had to stand in line for two hours, in the middle of the street, with approximately 200 other people.

We stood outside a building that looks like a German bunker with electrified gates all around.

Finally, a guard showed up and said that only a certain number of us could go into the embassy, so he started asking for our papers.

I was lucky to have a student visa application. He let me in while about 100 other people tried yelling and screaming to get in.

Finally, at around 9:30 a.m., the consuls came out and asked for papers.

Students went on to a separate line (again, I was lucky). I had to sit in a patio, 40 degrees outside, rain or shine, until 4 p.m. that afternoon to wait for a stamp for my passport.

A couple of days later, I flew into Miami International Airport. The first thing I hear is "Pasajeros del vuelo 003 procedente de Barran-quilla, Colombia, favor acercarse a la ventanilla numero 5."

We had our own special line at the immigration offices.

Needless to say, they searched every one of us with a Colombian passport.

So, as I'm getting ready for the trip to Honduras during spring break, I keep wishing I had a blue passport.

Things would be easier.

Not only would I not need a visa, but I would be treated like some kind of goddess.

So, for those of you who do have a blue passport, go call home and thank your parents for letting you be born here.

And to those of us lucky enough to get visas, I will thank Rice for letting me come.

Carmen A. Peralta

Wiess '96

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 1, 1996 issue.

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