On the whole we love living in Belgium. But we have just been reminded how lucky we are to come from the right end of Europe.

Our former au pair just dropped by. She’s Bulgarian, has been studying at Leuven since she moved out of here in September last year, despite not having a student visa in the hope that eventually her application for temporary residence would be processed by the bureaucrats and she’d be allowed to stay.

She came around to say goodbye. She was told on Thursday that her application had been turned down and she had five days to leave the country.

The EU’s visa policy towards both the newly joined ten member states and the prospectives like Bulgaria is deeply stupid, offensive and counterproductive. At least I have the satisfaction of having said so in public, in my old job (PDF) and my current one (HTML). What good does it do to bar motivated, intelligent, honest people like A. from contributing to our society? Why do our governments insist on empowering the people traffickers and penalising the law-abiding traveller?

The only politician I’ve ever heard talking sense on this issue was Pat Cox, and he has now stood down from the European Parliament. I appreciate that my view is not the same as what we are told is the general view of the public, but I would like to see a little more courage from our politicians on this one.

Meanwhile I hope it won’t be too long before we can welcome A. back into our house. She is a smart, hard-working young woman, was the best of the three au pairs we have had, and deserved to be treated better than that by the Belgian state.