One Government Department That Works


This passport image is made up of words that loosely describe me

Is Immigration and Emigration. I’ve never had a Sri Lankan passport, so I filled out the forms last night. Got my cousin the lawyer to sign them in the morning and dropped them off around noon. Three hours later, I had a working passport. It’s really quite remarkably efficient. The people are nice, the service is fast and the office is nice. There’s a food court downstairs with decent lunch, banks in the building, a clearly marked photocopy station, etc. And they deliver a working passport in three hours. I’m really quite impressed. They also have an informative website where all the forms are available.

So I think the ground level department works. Now I just wish the policy makers would make it possible for people, including foreigners, to actually immigrate here. Under current law it’s impossible unless you have descent here, or are basically a millionaire.

As a note, another government department that works is the information hotline. Just dial 1919 and they’ll quickly and politely answer almost any government/documentation related question, in three languages.

5 Comments

  1. Sri Lanka is already too full of people to allow immigration, I think.

    It’s just too crowded; our population density is already too high.

    An island the size of Sri Lanka should have around 8 million people max.

  2. Hey did you get that new fangled passport? Did you take any more pictures of it, would like to have a squiz – not at your personal details but how the passport looks :)

  3. That’s just silly. Sri Lanka doesn’t have a single city over 1 million people and it has middling population density.

    The point of immigration isn’t to bring huge numbers in, it’s to reverse the brain drain and bring skilled professionals in, as well as people that want to do business and invest.

  4. Imma gonna have to disagree with you. Colombo can be a hell hole. It’s just too full of people, the traffic is absolutely horrendous (and can only get worse) and so are other major towns/cities like Kandy. There are simply too many bodies living on a small island. The last thing Sri Lanka needs is even more people making it even more crowded, with even smaller plots of land going around, with super narrow roads and super long queues. What the island has in terms of population is more than enough. 20 million odd people crammed into a tiny island the size of Tasmania… Sri Lanka is number 42 out of 239 countries when it comes to that population density table… not something that great really.

    The truth is, Sri Lankan citizenship really ain’t a prized pocession – especially for a foreigner/westerner. Giving foreigners more say in buying property/setting up businesses is one thing, but a larger population is certainly not in SL’s interests, at least at the moment and given the resources the island has. Who is going to give up citzenship in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia for Sri Lankan citizenship?

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