In this turbulent era, what does it mean to be optimized by a company? This used to mean tears, self-doubt and anger, but now, humans who are accustomed to it have evolved it into a biological instinct. When the optimization notice comes, people will quickly trigger an idea: The time is almost up, it is time to apply for a visa!
On social platforms, hurrying up to apply for a visa while leaving your job has become the motto of the times, the Chinese version of the Ten Commandments of Moses.
This is not because after leaving the company, we have time to relax and enjoy ourselves together.Instead, we must seize the opportunity to apply for a visa during the window period before losing our status as a working person.
The interruption of salary flow, changes in social security status and employment status are closely related to the pass rate of the visa system. At this time when finding a job is becoming more and more mysterious, every Chinese may have his or her own visa expiration date.
When it comes to visas, VFS Global Visa Center cannot be avoided:
It is a good secretary to the embassy, and it is also Zhou Bapi in people's hearts. From Xiaohongshu to reddit, more and more people are attacking this company.
In the 1990s, as the IT industry took off, outsourcing began to flow, and multinational companies weaved a new global network.
What this incident has changed for individuals is that going abroad is no longer just a path for a few people in developing countries in East Asia, but has begun to become an option for the entire middle class, intellectuals, and technical talents.
In China and India, which have huge populations, it is even more spectacular. When more and more people move along this network, trying to change their way of life, the visa issue becomes a big problem.
In India at that time, the queues outside the U.S. Embassy were full of people, and sometimes they had to queue up to two days in advance. The visa staff inside the embassy were overwhelmed, and mistakes were the norm.
In this state, the U.S. Embassy has been thrust into the spotlight of public opinion. People question efficiency and fairness, and even raise this matter to the level of national dignity.
So in 2001, an Indian guy named Zubin Karkaria from the Kuoni India travel company saw the business opportunities and established VFS Global. He began to collect applicants' materials for the US Embassy and provide document delivery services.
In 1992, Indians lined up to apply for U.S. visas
Today, VFS Global has become the world's largest visa and passport outsourcing service provider for governments and diplomatic missions, serving 71 countries, operating more than 4,000 visa application centers in 167 countries, and has processed more than 537 million applications since 2001.
The subtlety of this model lies in making money at both ends.While earning money by undertaking visa system services for various countries, it also breaks down the originally standardized application process into services that can be paid to speed up and generate gold coins.
However, if money can be collected from both ends, scolding will come from all directions.
Zubin Karkaria, founder of vfs
In a sense, in this American era where even vending machines have begun to ask for tips, VFS Global is more like an old-school capitalist paradise. It is very simple. As long as you are willing to spend money, you can instantly experience the sense of invincibility that money clears the way.
It’s not unreasonable to call it a paradise. The prices in the cafe inside are on par with Europe, and the efficiency of the staff is Western-style. You can’t tell whether they are serious or lazy. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how many people line up, it only takes an hour.
But if you get the VIP service, it will be very different. Then upgrade directly to the special service. A Chandigarh-style small sofa is prepared for you, and self-service drinks and snacks are also placed on the small coffee table. If you are in a hurry and have not eaten when you come, the richness can definitely be used as a simple meal.
"For those who come late, VIP also means life extension. Once I was half an hour late, and they told me to either reschedule or upgrade to VIP today... After entering, you thought you would have to sit down for a while, thinking about eating something to get some books back, but the service staff gave you a set without stopping, and it took 10 minutes to complete the submission of documents and fingerprint entry. In the end, I could only leave with a bottle of soda as revenge."
"Later, I figured out that the reason why I got everything done so quickly after you joined VIP was because I wanted you to leave as soon as you were done. Don't just sit here and enjoy snacks, cola and coffee."
VFS Global is not the only company in the embassy visa outsourcing service track. Commonly used by Chinese are TLS for French visas and BLS for Spanish visas.
Although they have the same business model, they both provide visa outsourcing services, and they both sell prime time reservation fees, copying and uploading, and other hassles. Even in order to avoid robots swiping accounts, the web reservation system is as difficult to use as a mother:
But when it comes to selling value-added services, all similar institutions have to call their ancestors to the Indian VFS.
Generally speaking, the sales chain of VFS value-added services is not complicated. It is induced by waiting to awaken emotions. But a key step in achieving emotional guidance lies in the design of the team’s movement lines.
The one-way movement line drawn by the retractable isolation belt and the scarce seating configuration reconstruct the queue into a high-density consumption field, where time is slowed down and patience is drained inch by inch.
In the end, queuing is no longer just waiting, but gradually evolves into a war of attrition about people and willpower. And payment at this stage is no longer an IQ tax, but a glory bomb for desperate soldiers on the battlefield.
"It's better if there are more people, but if there are fewer people, the window will be smaller. Even if you are a tough guy enough to complete the ceremony, you won't want to queue up again, so you won't choose to come and get your passport for free. You will definitely spend more than 200 on the express service. No one can escape from the visa center, and they can only hold their noses and endure it."
Compared with foreigners, the complaints from Chinese tourists still seem too gentle and courteous. After all, we are more complaining about the troublesome process, while they have begun to question the rationality of the system itself.
On the international version of "Black Cat Complaints" Trustpilot, the website crashed, reservations were difficult, customer service was aphasic, and the process was confusing. A total of more than 1,300 messages were collected, helping VFS Global achieve a good score of 1.3/5, a number that is almost unheard of.
"If I could give them negative points, I really want to give them a million negative points!! It's okay that the website is tiring, but what happened when my reservation was taken away while I was paying? - Australian user"
"This is the worst website I have ever seen in my 35 years in the IT industry, not to mention the spelling errors. I really don't understand why the government would choose them for visa or passport renewal. - UK user"
"This is an example of the stupidity of the British government. They have outsourced a vital public service to people who are completely ignorant... Another waste of tax money to those incompetent outsourcing companies. I have written to the Home Office to complain - British User"
"The visa center is a piece of shit. - Indian user"
But after all, getting scolded is part of the outsourcing work of organizations like VFS Global.
The so-called more convenient and personalized visa services are essentially just a layer of packaging for ordinary people. Its really important role is that it draws a curtain between power and people, building a firewall.
On the surface, it helps the embassy and consulates divert crowds, reduce crowding and security pressure, and takes away a lot of procedural work and operating costs, allowing visa officers to only handle the final decision.
But at the innermost level, it also takes away the emotions. The anxiety of queuing, the chaos of the system, and the dissatisfaction with the results, which would have been directed at the embassy and consulates, are concentrated and released in this layer of outsourcing system.
Today, if you pay attention to social media, you will see young people showing off their passports, showing off their visas. To those who have emerged from the golden age of global travel, this display may seem absurd. So much so that it is difficult for many people to understand why people should be proud of a piece of paper permitting passage.
This situation goes hand in hand with the trend of applying for a visa before leaving the company. Hoarding visas is a fear of being deprived of the ability to move due to the turmoil of the times; showing visas is to confirm that you are still in the queue and have not been eliminated.
When faced with anxiety, people will always learn to get along with it.
In the West, people have even romanticized the annoying travel ID photo into an aesthetic trend. How to take a perfect passport photo has become a traffic secret on TikTok. Blogger Georgia Barratt’s tutorial has received 1.8 million likes. She uses a series of techniques such as light makeup and soft eyebrows to create the most bureaucratic aesthetic trend in the 21st century.
It’s not surprising that people show off; when free movement is not the norm, it degenerates into a scarce resource that can be displayed.
Visas and passports are a modern system that was born during war and preserved amid security anxiety. However, a writer once recalled a different world:
...
Earlier, a person only had one body and one soul. Today, he has to add a passport, otherwise people will not treat him as a human being.
In fact, since the First World War, perhaps nothing has caused people to feel that the world's consciousness has regressed more than the restriction of people's freedom of movement and the reduction of people's rights to freedom.
Before 1914, the earth belonged to all mankind.
Everyone can go wherever they want and stay as long as they want. No permits or visas are required.
When I tell young people today about my travels to India and the United States before 1914, I am always happy to see their repeated expressions of surprise. At that time, passports were not used, or there was no such thing as a passport at all.
People get on and off the bus without asking, and no one asks; today there are more than a hundred forms to fill out, but then there was no need to fill out any of them.
There were no permits or visas at that time, let alone difficulties; those national borders were just symbolic borders, and people could cross them as smoothly as they crossed the Greenwich Meridian.
—— Zweig, "The World of Yesterday"