Visa Refusal, The Human Cost to Human Dignity.

KARACHI BUREAU —For almost twenty-seven years, I remained an active banker. During that period, I had the opportunity to work in credit and marketing, banking operations, treasury, trade finance, public relations, and as an in-house trainer in Islamic finance and banking. Eventually, I moved from banking into teaching and professional training as my full-time livelihood, while simultaneously providing consultancy services in finance and banking.

On 14 March 2026, I completed fifty-three years of professional life and decided to enter another phase of my career as a freelancer. Looking back, I consider myself fortunate to have started travelling internationally in 1977. Since then, I have visited thirty-seven (37) countries and, at different stages of my life, have been a resident of seven countries (7). Each time, I left one country for another or returned to Pakistan, surrendering the residency status I had acquired. I had opportunities to obtain permanent residency, a green card, or even foreign citizenship, but I chose to remain Pakistani. I say this without regret at this age of 73.

Throughout these years, I have never been refused entry into any country where I had obtained the required visa or permission. I have travelled from the United States to Bangladesh, across Europe and the Middle East, and to countries in the Far East, Latin America and the Caribbean. For nearly five decades, international travel has been an ordinary part of my professional and personal life. Perhaps that is why my recent experience with an Irish visa has left me more puzzled than disappointed.

In April 2025, I applied for an Irish visa to visit my daughter and my grandsons. Because of COVID-19 and my professional commitments, I had not been able to see them for almost five years. My daughter is an Irish citizen, and she wanted her father to visit her family. For me, it was not an ambition to “visit Ireland” as a tourist. It was simply a father's wish to sit with his daughter and a grandfather's desire to see grandchildren who had grown old enough to know and recognize him. My documents were submitted and accepted. I was informed that the decision would take approximately eight weeks. My passport was retained, and I therefore had to remain in Pakistan while waiting. Eight weeks became eight months. Finally, in December 2025, the decision arrived, the visa application had been refused.

The reasons provided were, in my view, largely standardized objections, many of which I had already addressed in my original application. I read the decision and smiled, not because I found the matter amusing, but because my first thought was that perhaps the closing months of the year had placed pressure on the system to clear a backlog. I wondered whether my application, my professional background, my extensive travel history and my previous visit to Ireland had received the individual consideration I had expected. I must make one thing absolutely clear, this article is not a complaint against Ireland, nor is it an objection to its immigration laws. Every sovereign country has the right to determine who may enter its territory, and every immigration authority has its own procedures for assessing applications. My concern is about the human side of the process.

My son-in-law, who holds a senior position with a leading international accounting firm in Ireland, encouraged me to appeal. Initially, I refused. My daughter, however, insisted that I should make the effort. Having studied immigration procedures in a professional capacity and having some familiarity with systems influenced by British immigration law, I believed that an appeal could consume another year without changing the outcome. I told my family that I had no particular desire to return to Ireland. I had invitations from universities in the United Kingdom to deliver lectures, and I could simply meet my daughter in London. I therefore telephoned the Deputy High Commission of the United Kingdom in Karachi and explained that I am seventy-three, a freelance teacher, trainer, columnist, broadcaster and author, and that I had been invited to deliver lectures at universities. I asked whether my circumstances would permit me to obtain a British visa. The lady on the telephone politely asked me one question: “Sir, have you been to the UK before?” I replied, “Yes. Nineteen times. I have been travelling to the UK since 1978.” I also explained that I had held a temporary work visa in 1982, which I surrendered in 1984, and had subsequently visited the country several times. Her response was courteous and straightforward. She advised me to submit my documents through the designated visa collection center and said the application would be processed promptly. That conversation made me reflect on my Irish experience even more deeply.

Ireland was never a destination I was desperate to visit. I had already seen Dublin in 1981, when I was working in the aviation profession and Aer Lingus was among the handling agencies associated with our operations. I also attended a course in Ireland and stayed for nine days. Those memories remain pleasant. In the afternoons, we would take bicycles and ride around Dublin. We were interested in food, people and different parts of the city. Pubs and nightclubs were never our attraction. What impressed us most was the friendliness of ordinary Irish people. They generally treated us as respectable visitors, and we remembered Ireland with warmth.

Decades earlier, in 1979, I had also attended a professional course at the British Home Office in Croydon on immigration law relating to the United Kingdom and Ireland. Five officers attended the same workshop, two from Dublin and three from Belfast. Although they came from communities divided by a difficult political history, they were remarkably friendly with us. During cafeteria breaks, Pakistani and Indian participants would sit together, and the Irish officers would often join our conversations. Politics was never our subject. We were professionals, and our common interest was simply our work. That memory made my recent experience particularly difficult to understand.

During the appeal process, I was asked to provide my original birth certificate and marriage certificate. I was born in 1953 and married in 1985. My passport, national identity card and other official documents already established these facts, yet the original historical records were requested. Obtaining them was not simple. My birth record originated from a period when my mother had received only a small discharge receipt on which my name had been recorded. My marriage documentation was originally in Urdu. Locating, retrieving and preparing these records in an acceptable form took time and money.

The Irish authorities also requested original birth and marriage documents from my daughter and son-in-law, both of whom are Irish citizens and had submitted such documents during their own citizenship process. I complied with every request, not because I had suddenly developed a compelling desire to visit Ireland, but because I did not want my family to feel that I was unwilling to make the effort to see them. The original documents remained with Irish Immigration, while we continued waiting for their return.

At that stage, I already suspected that the final answer might again be negative. Nevertheless, I continued because sometimes family happiness requires us to go through procedures that we ourselves would not otherwise choose. There is, however, a larger issue here. When a person pays a substantial visa fee, additional charges to the appointed handling agency, spends money obtaining documents, and surrenders a passport for an extended period, the cost is not merely financial. Time is also a cost. For a professional freelancer, time can mean lost assignments, cancelled lectures and lost income. In my case, the prolonged retention of my passport restricted my ability to travel for professional engagements. The waiting period therefore affected not only a family visit but also my livelihood.

A visa application is not simply a piece of paper moving from one desk to another. Behind every application is a human being, a family, a professional commitment, sometimes a lifetime of travel history, and often a very personal reason for wanting to cross a border. For senior citizens, the matter becomes even more sensitive.

At seventy-three, I do not seek adventure through immigration queues. I seek time with my children and grandchildren. Many parents and grandparents around the world are in exactly the same position. Their children live abroad, their grandchildren grow up thousands of miles away, and an occasional family visit becomes something precious.

Immigration authorities must, of course, protect their countries and enforce their laws. No one disputes that responsibility. But perhaps the system can also recognize the difference between a person who presents a genuine family or professional purpose and someone whose circumstances genuinely raise immigration concerns.

I am a professional traveler, not an immigration critic. I have crossed borders for nearly fifty years, respected the laws of every country I visited, and returned when my permission expired. I have surrendered residency rights rather than abusing them. I have never been refused entry where I had secured the required permission. So, perhaps, my experience is worth sharing, not as an accusation, but as a reflection. A country that welcomes millions of visitors each year does not merely issue visas; it also creates impressions of itself through the way it treats those who apply for them. Sometimes a refusal may be legally correct and still leave a human being wondering whether his individual circumstances were truly heard. Ireland has every right to say no. But every genuine applicant should feel that the answer came after someone carefully considered who he or she was, why they were travelling, what their history demonstrated, and what they were actually asking for. My daughter wanted her father to visit. A grandfather wanted to see his grandchildren. A professional traveler wanted to spend some time in a country he had once remembered with affection. Perhaps that should not be considered merely a visa case. Perhaps it should also be remembered as a human story.

And to my friends in Ireland, including those involved in public life, lawmaking and immigration debate, I offer this account in the same spirit in which it is written: not with bitterness, but with goodwill and hope that the voice of a bona fide traveler, and particularly of a senior citizen wishing to meet his children, will always have a place in the conversation about immigration.