Traveling seems fun and fulfilling, unless you belong to a country like mine. There are so many hilariously absurd things packed into this one simple truth.

Let’s start with the obvious: I didn’t choose to be born, and I definitely didn’t get to pick my coordinates on the world map. I think my parents just had one too many glasses of wine that December, and here I am, winner of the geographical lottery nobody wants to win. Green passport, third-world country, instant suspicion. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

Here’s what kills me about the whole thing. We live in a world that preaches “innocent until proven guilty,” except when you’re holding the wrong color passport at immigration. When you buy a dozen eggs and find most of them rotten, you don’t automatically assume the remaining ones are bad too. You check each one. But apparently, this basic logic doesn’t apply to humans at border control.

Look, I get it. If I’m crossing your border, I need to prove I can support myself. Fair enough. Check my bank statements. Scrutinize my itinerary. Call my employer if you want. Hell, I’ll even show you my return ticket three times if it makes you feel better. What I don’t understand is why my passport color turns a routine check into an interrogation that would make detective shows jealous.

“Why do you want to visit our country?” Because your tourism board literally spent millions advertising it? “What do you do for work?” Something interesting enough to afford this trip but not boring enough to steal anyone’s job. “How do we know you’ll leave?” Because I have Netflix subscriptions and an Xbox back home?

The real kicker is when I visit countries with economies weaker than my own. Take Vietnam, for instance. Rich in everything my country lacks: culture, natural beauty, and genuinely warm people. Not so rich in GDP. Did that matter? Not to the Vietnamese people I met. Language barriers meant nothing. Strangers helped me find my way, shared meals, and treated me like family. Every interaction felt genuine and warm.

Only if they knew what I went through just to meet them.

The visa application alone was a masterpiece of bureaucratic torture. Three months of waiting. Documents that needed documents to prove my documents were real. Bank statements going back six months to prove I wouldn’t abandon my mediocre but stable life to illegally sell pho on the streets of Hanoi. Because that’s definitely my master plan: leave my remote job to compete with locals in a street food market where I don’t even speak the language.

But here’s where it gets truly special. When a handful of people from my country did overstay or work illegally, what was the solution? Punish everyone with the same passport. It’s collective punishment at its finest. My government doesn’t even do this to me, and they know exactly where I live.

The cherry on top of this absurdity sundae is how some countries handle it now. They’ll still let you apply for a visa, complete with hefty nonrefundable fees, knowing full well they’re going to reject it. There’s no official announcement that they’ve stopped issuing visas to your country. No explanation for the rejection. Just take the money and send a generic “unfortunately” email. It’s brilliant, really. Pure profit, zero accountability. Meanwhile, the actual troublemakers probably just bought fake documents from some guy named Dave on the internet.

And before someone says, “Just get a better passport,” let me stop you right there. I work exactly enough to pay my bills, save a little, and occasionally see the world. I’m not trying to immigrate to your country. I don’t want your job. I just want to stand in your mountains, eat your weird local delicacy that tourists are warned against, get food poisoning, post some photos that nobody cares about, and go home. Is that really so threatening?

The truth is, I know I’m lucky to even have the option to travel. There are people from my country who’ll never afford to face these rejections. But that makes it worse, not better. Those of us who can afford to travel, who can prove financial stability, and who have every reason to return home are still treated like risks because of where we happened to be born.

So here’s my proposal: make borders open but smart. If someone overstays or breaks the rules, catch them and punish them. Don’t punish millions of us who just want to spend our hard-earned money in your country, boost your economy, and leave with nothing but photos and probably some overpriced souvenirs we’ll regret buying.

Until then, I’ll keep playing this ridiculous lottery, knowing that my perfectly valid documents, stable job, and clean record mean less than the color of my passport cover. At least the visa rejection emails are getting more creative. The last one almost seemed sorry.

Almost.