My Daughters For Your Visas

Ten steps to get a visa to anywhere:

1. Dress like a sixth form pupil in a religious boarding school – modest and sweet, scrubbed skin and the expression of a gentle forbearing angel
2. Disguise that motivation. Working visa in order to economically rape your country? Good grief officer, no, visiting my poor sick sister in order to nurse her back to health
3. Flatter to buggery. ‘But I was so hoping to see some of the beautiful sights of your country, where the welcome is famous and the camels are pulchritudinous'
4. Invent some helpful relatives. ‘Absolutely, I’ve been wanting to visit Saudi Arabia for many years, my grandfather was a close friend of Philby pere. In fact, it was Granddad F who first shouted ‘We struck really really dirty water!’ on that special day in Dahran '38
5. Bitch up the neighbours…. ‘It would be so great if you could give my friend a visa for Qatar. He’s only been to Kuwait/Bahrain/Qatar/Dubai so far, and I’d love to show him some real Arab hospitality…’
6. Cry. Let those crystalline tears drip on their forms - bureaucrats hate smudges
7. Cry some more
8. Tell the embassy staff you’ll be fired
9. Tell the embassy staff that if you get fired Little Alice will never get her operation
10. If all else fails, make for the border and tuck a hundred dollars into your passport for ‘administrative costs’