Some countries such as the Maldives grant free visas on arrival. What's the point? Why not grant entries without a visa, as for example Singapore or Hong Kong are doing for citizens of many countries such as France?
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Maldives are a small country that doesn't have the capacity to support a full visa issuance process through diplomatic posts abroad. It doesn't want to either. But due to the general reciprocity principle, Maldives require visas from people holding passports of countries that require visas for Maldivian citizens. France is one such country.
To make it easy and seamless, since they don't really care, it's a free visa on arrival. But to support the reciprocity principle, you still need a visa.
Not every country follows the reciprocity principle, and some countries don't require visas for passport holders of countries which do. For example, a lot of countries don't require visas for US passports even though US require visas for theirs. This is mostly due to the disproportional impact of such requirements.
Trang Oul
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oh whatever
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Each country may of course have their own reasons to offer a free visa on arrival. Another possible reason I can think of is that it in some countries may be a tedious and lengthy legal process to lift visa requirements, while moving the place of issuance and changing the visa fee may be a simple administrative act.
If country A requires a visa for visitors from country B, but e.g. wants to encourage tourism (which is probably the case for the Maldives), it is not unlikely that actually lifting the visa requirement is a process, which after thorough analysis must go through several political instances before the legislation can be changed. To allow such a change to pass legislation, it is perhaps not enough to assume that increased travel from country B does not pose a risk, but the advantages and disadvantages of such a change must be put against eachother based on substantiated facts. Moving the place of issuance from the foreign embassy to a local border checkpoint and reducing the fee to 0 may however be something a ministry may decide during a coffee break. For all practical purposes, the goal has been achieved. Citizens from B can now de facto travel to A as if they did not need a visa, but country B has saved a lot of bureaucratic overhead.
Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
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It may be a way to institute mandatory registration. "Entry without a visa" could be reasonably interpreted as meaning one could bypass the government booth. They can usually physically stop that, but it's nice to have an unambiguous legal mandate, also presumably a few people may come by boats other than big cruisers.
Emilio M Bumachar
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