Reports reaching this paper say, Manoj Kumar is currently out of Liberia due to his own behavior which was incompatible with his status as an alien thereby causing his reentry visa to be cancelled.
Manoj who was standing trial before the Civil Law Court of Liberia having been declared an ‘Undesirable alien and a threat to national security,’ fled the country and evaded immigration authorities when an indictment was issued him.
Accordingly, the statute grants the respondent the power to revoke and cancel deny visas to aliens therefore, as much as a country may grant visa, it is also its sole right to deny same to anyone without explanation.
Section 5.1 of the Alien and Nationality Law states that the Attorney General has the right to exclude any alien from entry into Liberia.
In a response to a petition for declaratory judgment filed for by the Manoj as plaintiff told the court that he was in the city of Monrovia but the respondent, the Liberia Immigration Service, informed that court that Manoj who possesses dubious identities, lied under oath about his residency.
The respondent said some of the multiple names Manoj uses are Manoj Kumar Vastwani and Haresh Kumar while the court raised several issues among which was that the remedy available under a petition for declaratory judgment to a citizen is not one and the same as a petition of such nature for a non-citizen.
Section 5. 14(2) of the same Law under the title, ‘Refusal of Immigration Visa when immigration is contrary to national interest states, “If the Attorney General finds that entry of more immigrants into Liberia would be contrary to national interest and request the secretary of the state to refuse issuance of any further immigration visa until further notice; the secretary of the state shall honor such request and direct the consular officer to refuse immigration visas to any applicants until notice to the contrary is received from the Attorney General.”
The court surmised that the intent for such statue is to enable the Government of Liberia through the Ministry of Justice to refuse to issue visa to applicant or an individual alien who may be against national interest or threat to national security.
Therefore, the court went further that inference from the above cited statute presupposes that an application for entry visa is not a right to alien nationals.
But unfortunately, the petitioner seems not to understand that the issuance of an entry visa to non-Liberian is a privilege and not a right.
Interestingly, the relief sought to declare one rights as citizen is not the same as the relief sought to declare one rights as a non-citizen, the two reliefs are distinct and separate hence, the two are not one and the same.
One relief is sought as a right while the other is sought as privilege and the latter is at the discretion of the issuer, the country (Liberia), through the attorney general.
As contrary to the instant case, a petition for declaratory judgement for a Liberian citizen denied entry is a right.
Furthermore, a petition for declaratory judgement is an action which can be filed before courts of records within the Republic.
A declaratory judgement does not make a conclusive decision on a case; rather, it is used for the purpose of settling a dispute so that the case can progress freely with the matter in question having been resolved.
The purpose of declaratory judgements is to make the parties to an action aware of their legal rights if those rights are not entirely clear to them hence, that the process does not, cannot, in any way grant a right to a visa for a foreigner, a non-citizen as in the instant case.
Recently, Manoj’s wife, Bharati Vatwani and her daughter staged a peaceful protest at the Capitol Building in Monrovia against what she called the unlawful denial of her husband’s entry into the country by authorities of the Liberia Immigration Service (LIS).
The wife of Manoj Kumar, resident of Monrovia, Vatwani, said the peaceful protest was intended to draw the attention of the government, particularly members of the Legislature regarding the ‘unlawful act’ being meted out against her husband by authorities of the Liberia Immigration Service.
