400,000 Seeking to Leave : Lebanese Resort to Forged Visas

The only business booming in Lebanon these days, apart from a roaring trade in bullets and bombs, is the sale of forged visas to people wishing to leave.

About 400,000 Lebanese want to leave their homeland, which has been racked by sporadic war for 13 years and has two governments, two armies, a toothless Parliament and rival Shia Muslim militias vying for power.

For a price, forged entrance visas can be obtained to gain entrance to the United States, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, West Germany--the list is endless.

Some travel agents specialize in supplying forged visas at $2,000 each.

The business has flourished over the last several months as up to 1 of every 8 Lebanese, according to official sources, are planning to emigrate from a country facing a threat of partition.

Those buying the forged papers do not always escape the security net.

Security officials at Beirut airport said that they had arrested 300 people with forged visas--mainly to Canada, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Denmark--in the last three months of 1988.

“Some admit they bought the visas, while others were fooled by some travel agents,” one official said.

He quoted one man recently arrested for selling forged visas as saying hundreds of people, mostly Shia Muslims, had asked him for travel documents after failing to get entry permits from several countries.

Western embassies are cautious about granting visas to Lebanese, who need permits to enter every country except neighboring Syria.

The measures started about five years ago after a wave of bombings in Europe and the kidnaping and killing of foreigners by pro-Iranian Muslim militants in Beirut.

Long lines of university graduates, students and families form at embassies in Beirut and in the Syrian capital, Damascus, where they sometimes keep nightlong vigils and wait for days for their turn to apply for visas.

For some, the uncertain and often protracted delay in getting an official response is too much to take.

“My brother wanted to go to Canada, but after waiting for over a year to get a visa, he became desperate and decided to buy a visa from one of those travel agents,” one Lebanese said. “Now my brother is in Canada.”

“We always hoped this war would end, but now we are stuck in small areas expecting the worst to happen any minute. We feel we are suffocating and have to leave,” Nicola Hajj said.

The 30-year-old engineer was one of several university graduates engaged in a heated argument at a West Beirut restaurant about whether to leave Lebanon.

“I am applying to Canada and Australia. Whichever gives me a visa first will become my new country,” he said.

At least five of his friends said they planned to leave.

“For many years of the war we accepted shelling, living in damp shelters for days, kidnapings, killings of loved ones, lack of power, water and even bread.

“Now our country faces division. It is better to leave than be forced to choose between two loyalties,” said Said Madi, a 50-year-old businessman and father of three, preparing to emigrate to Canada with his family.

Scores of other families told Reuters that they had plans to start a new life abroad, in what official sources said is the largest wave of emigration since the start of the civil war.

Most of the Lebanese plan to go to Canada, the United States and Australia, but officials at the embassies of those countries told Reuters that there has been no recent increase in the number of Lebanese applying for visas.

The $2,000 visa men appear to have cornered the market.

For Lebanese mass emigration is not a new phenomenon. Hundreds of thousands left in 1860 after bloody clashes between the country’s Druze and Christian communities.

Thousands more left during World War I, swelling communities already established in Africa, Latin America and Europe.

A deep economic crisis that hit the country also prompted thousands to seek employment mostly in oil-rich Persian Gulf states, and many leading businessmen and bankers moved to more stable if not greener pastures.

Lebanese traders gained immense influence in the economic life of many of their host countries, and some became leading politicians and businessmen.

Some of the Lebanese who emigrated over the last few years say they suffered from anti-Lebanese sentiment in Europe and the United States as Lebanon became associated with plane hijackings and kidnapings of Westerners.

“We know once we leave we will face difficulties in adapting, but at least we will escape the ugliness of having to choose which part of Lebanon to live in,” Hajj said.