aggienaut | Entries tagged with visa problems

   CRISTINA'S VISA HAS BEEN GRANTED!!

   And so now we're immediately on to the next problem, getting from there to here. As an American I've always been able to book any flights around the world without worrying about such things as transit visas. When they've come up at all, like when I was transiting through New Zealand recently, it's a "oh you need to fill out this card before landing." But it's a different story for a Venezuelan like Cristina. So far the flights I've been able to find even involve a domestic flight in Chile for which she'd require a full visitor visa to Chile, or a two hour transfer in the US (SFO) for which seems like such a small simple thing right? No as far as I can tell you need a transit visa for even that, and that requires a visit to a US embassy, and the nearest US embassy is in Colombia. Next on my list is looking up booking flights through very specifically countries that won't require her a transit visa, which is looking like Madrid to Doha to Australia (that specific one is 60 hours with a 20 hour layover in Doha!). And I'm going to undertake applying for both the US transit visa and chile visa in hopes either one turns out to be relatively easy (haven't even looked into the chile visa yet, and for the US one I think they _could_ waive the visit to the embassy so I might apply in hopes they do that or worse case scenario she can always fly to Bogota for that).

   Anyway, if anyone here happens to have useful wisdom about overcoming this next set of obstacles please share!!

Current Music: Otyken - Lord of Honey

   What really stressed me out in the run up to a big trip is the fear that I'll forget something absolutely mission critical. Most things it would be inconvenient to have forgotten, a charging cable or a tooth brush, but ultimately you can replace them. Compared to showing up at the airport without a visa or say proof of covid vaccination or such like seemingly increasing number of vitally important ancilliary documents. I have this almost superstitious belief that I _will_ forget something and am always relieved when it turns out to be something relatively unimportant, like, in this case, a neck pillow. And then I naively think that I'm all set thats the only thing I've forgotten and I can breath a sigh of relief. Well. It wasn't just the neck pillow this time.

   So for this, my longest continuous trip in Africa at nearly 60 days, one would think I'd have been stressing and preparing for it well in advance, but as covered in previous entries, I was almost entirely preoccupied with resubmitting the documents for Cristina's visa until just literally yesterday (now all filed thank god!). Then I could finally start thinking about this trip.
   I still needed to book my outbound flight out of Africa, so I did that yesterday evening among other things. I've got my passport(s!), and I even still have half a million francs from last year! Multiple passports and half a million francs makes me feel like a secret agent! Never mind that that's like forty bucks. I still had my covid vaccination certificate from last year, printed out the proof of visa approval (which had taken mere hours to get, sorted two weeks ago).
   Then around 12:30 today, an hour and a half before my planned departure from my house, I actually began packing (: (in my defense I was waiting for the laundry to finish). For a 9:15pm departure, I planned to be at the airport at 5:00 -- that would give me an hour buffer to be there three hours before the flight. Which meant I'd have to take the airport shuttle leaving Geelong at 3:15 arriving at the airport at 4:45. My dear friend Billie was keen to meet for dinner during that extra hour I had besides. I'd park my car at work at 2:55, which meant leaving the house at 2! crazy how it all adds up.

   I had just left the house when I realized I'd forgotten my neck pillow. But I'd already locked up and given the key to the neighbor so getting back in would have been more involved than just running in. Arrived in town with plenty of time (1:30!), so got clif bars from the grocery store which is something I'd wanted to do but not had time. Got to work at just right on about 2:00 and bossman was ready to immediately hop in the car and take me to the shuttle bus stop, great!

   Turns out I had miscalculated here. It wasn't 10-15 minutes to the shuttle bus stop, it was half an hour. Arriving fully 15 minutes after the scheduled shuttle bus departure it of course wasn't there. Thank god I built an extra hour into my schedule! Dinner with Billie was out though.
   But it was then that with a feeling of dread I realized what I didn't have. And it is a lot lot worse than a neck pillow.

   I don't know what triggered me to think o it, but suddenly I reached for my passports and desperately leafed through the US one. There should have been a well worn folded yellow document, my yellow fever vaccination record, required by most countries in Africa. It wasn't there. It is "supposed" to always been be in my passport but at some point, probably scanning it or the passport for visa stuff, it had evidently failed to return to the passport.

   It was still only 3:30, my flight is at 9:15. I quickly calculated, if I could drive hell for leather back home, grab it, and straight to the airport, that would get me there maybe 2.5 hours before the flight. If there were no delays. If I could somehow do something with my car at the airport end of things. If I could promptly get from this bus station to my car, and if my neighbor was still home to give me my keys .... basically only in the most theoretical sense was this possible.
   This was/is the most bowl-shaking nightmare circumstance I dread, the epitome of the possibilty that haunts me in perparation for flights, the vague idea of which causes stress and anxiety, now a reality!

   Well they've let me through the gate checks and I'm waiting at the gate now. What I'm hoping, the one glimmer of hope I have, is that because I _did_ scan it for a visa, I have the image of it on my computer. I've now emailed that to myself so I have it on my phone. I have a feeling the mere image of a legal document is not entirely satisfactory (fun fact, apparently yellow fever vaccination records are "the only medical record that is also a legal document" or something. Well I was told that years ago the covid vaccination record is probably in the same category) ... but this being Guinea where the officials all seem to be absolutely rapacious for bribes, the official on the other end will probably recognize the insufficiency as a reason not to turn me around but rather, with a avaricious gleam in their eye to demand a bribe from me. And I'll be admittedly a bit over a barrel this time.

   I was thinking, as I stressed about the vague possibility of some problem like this, that once I was through airport security I could at least relax for the next 27 hours, but now this upcoming confrontation at the Guinean border will be looming before me

   In other news they charge $30 for these god damn neck pillows. The first one I found was $70 and I nearly had a heart attack.

   Also in lighter news, the humorous comedy relief sub plot of the week has been that I found myself with far far too many sausages ater buying more last Friday when I evidently still had some. Being gone for the next two months obviously I've got to eat them first so I've been stuffing myself with sausages for every meal. Would have liked to eat out one last time with western food before going to Africa, nope I've had sausage eating responsibilities to attend to.

   But seriously though the lack of this yellow fever certificate is seriously no bueno. It's required for Ghana as well, where I'll go after Guinea. If they do let me into Guinea I think I'll see if I can get the vaccination all over again to get a new certificate.

-7:24pm - at the gate

   It's a rainy Saturday, because of course it is (god forbid I have weather that would allow me to look at my hives, its been too many weeks!), anyway, at least it's good weather for writing. I presently have four entries on my to-do list to write as soon as possible:

1. The Road Ahead: Update on upcoming travel plans and Cristina visa
2. A guide to the Otways for Medium
3. The Apinautica - Chapter 6 (first scene in Australia).
4. Book reviews of Unaccompanied Women in Norway, Three in Norway (By Two of them), Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), and To Say Nothing of the Dog

   More on these later, but first thing's first: there's been a development with Cristina's visa!!
Cristina's Visa (to bring my fiancee here)

The bad news: the Department requested all the police and medical checks all over again, since it's been about 16 months since it was all filed. This is all kind of a big hassle. In fact so much of a hassle tha the lawyers say they'll have to charge us $1000-1500 more .. which is also a hassle.

The good news: is I'm pretty sure, and the lawyers concur, that this probably means they're finalizing the consideration of the visa and once we get all this in it may only be a few more weeks to months until a decision is reached! I think we'd kind of settled into thinking it would essentially never actually happen but now that this has happened I've been thinking all the time about how amazing it will be to actually have her here with me.

   By far the most irksome of the requests is for me to once again have an FBI background check. I remember this being a hassle last time as well. One must fill out a bunch of forms, pay a bunch of fees, get fingerprinted by local police and have it mailed to them. And this last aspect, getting fingerprinted by local police, has turned out to be absolutely mind bogglingly difficult. I don't remember how I got an appointment last time, it might have been by pulling personal connections with the police force, because the official appointment booking website and phone number both NEVER show any openings. And even when I'd finally gotten one last time, I arrived to find they'd only take payment in an obscure form of payment nearly no one uses any more (money order from the post office), and when the FBI results finally came it was via an email with stern warnings that it could only be accessed once, like some kind of god damn exploding message, so I went out of my way to use a more dependable computer than my then-very-undependable computer. And so I'll have to go through all this mind you, when I haven't even set foot in the states since the last time I got an FBI background check.
   I think the lawyers are saying as long as I've thoroughly documented my attempts to make an appointment and in light of that I haven't even been to the States in the interim, I should hopefully be able to get this requirement waived. But its not a certainly the department won't be officially annoyed about that and it's altogether a huge hassle.

The Road Ahead: Upcoming Travel
   So first there was Ghana. They want me there from May 19th through the end of June. This is two weeks longer than last year, and I'm excited because this is the kind of work I most want to be doing and it even pays better than my regular work here.
   Then Guinea asked if I could do another project there this year, and conveniently the three weeks right before Ghana fit right into our mutual schedules. BUT that's only two weeks away now and the official planning arm of that organization hasn't even gotten started on it (flights and visas) so I give it about a 50/50 of going forward vs falling through. But if it does go through then I'll be in West Africa for two solid months, which I think will be the longest I've continuously been in Africa.
   And then one of my cousin's is getting married a week or so into July. Incidentally my cousin is getting married in a red wood grove -- my parents got married under a brazilian pepper tree, my older brother got married in a red wood grove, I've always said if I get married here in Australia Ii want to get married in this California red wood grove here; it seems we have a bit of a family tradition about this. I haven't been to the States in three years. And I'd probably be traveling there directly from West Africa (the Organization is going to hate me when they start trying to plan flights and get all my weird requests). And then if I'm entering the US from east, well then I miiiight as well visit my 96 year old grandfather in Rochester NY, whom I haven't seen in many years and he's getting up there. And if Australia really really wants an FBI check from me then I can more easily get it while I'm in the US.
   After a week or two in California, IF her visa hasn't been approved yet, the plan is to meet up with Cristina for a month, I'm still wishy-washy between Spain or Colombia. We've been talking about Spain for over a year but on top of all this travel it feels like it would make more sense not to travel "backwards" to Europe and just go to Colombia, although practically speaking where we spend a day traveling to is probably much of a muchness between the two.
   And then here's another travel-philosophy circumstance: after two weeks in California and a month with Cristina that would have me returning to Australia in mid August .... only to leave two weeks later for the world beekeeping congress in Chile. Or I could spend two more weeks with Cristina but you know even if we've settled ourselves in some cheap and beautiful remote beachside corner of the world, in lost income alone spending additional weeks on vacation is expensive, and it would still be way more cost effective to fly back to Australia, work for two weeks and then fly back to South America then to just say hang out in Colombia those two weeks.
   But maybe, hopefully, Cristina's visa will be granted by then. Ideally if it was granted while we were traveling together that would be nice because then we could travel to Australia together. Ever since Mexico refused her entry I've been afraid to depend on her traveling alone, not that she's not an extremely capable woman but I think border security would be less likely to play games with her if I was there with her on my arm.

Other Things
   I've posted a few things to Medium now(introduction, and the Melbourne, Penguin Prom and Grampians parts of my "Visiting Victoria" series; and one of my stories that had previously won third place in some international travel writing competition, The Road to Zenzellma) and "joined a publication" (globetrotters), so I can make posts that everyone subscribed to it would see. It does seem like if you use it right you could potentially get more interaction than on livejournal now, and some people do seem to use it as more of a personal journal, but by and large it does seem still more oriented to public facing posts. And there's a lot of crap on there that looks shamelessly put together for SEO and/or by AI. One thing that's kind of funny about Medium is instead of "likes" there are "claps" and you can clap an entry ("story") you like up to 50 times so it can look like you're getting a lot of likes but then you realize it's only three people.

   Last week I wrote the first draft of the first scene of my first stay in Australia for the book I'm working on. Because this is a travelogue and not a everything-that-has-ever-happened-to-me, like the US parts it goes a bit more into exposition to speed through Australia, but this first scene I chose to focus on is a story I often find myself telling, how on my first day working for a very negative boss I got stung up a LOT more than usual, possibly indicative of bees sensing how one is feeling. Anyway I'll probably post that bit here tomorrow.

   Okay, on to other things!

In Review: So, if you didn't see the post I made yesterday, I need to get some documents together to file for my fiancee's visa and am in a hurry to get it done before they make the visa harder to get which could be any day. Yesterday I needed to get some "stat decs" (notarized statements) from friends attesting to the genuineness of the relationship, as well as some papers filed with a "registered celebrant" (authorized officiator of weddings, which apparently requires like an associates degree in officiating or something, seriously).

Yesterday's updates: I added some updates to yesterday's post after initially making it so you may have missed them. First a neighbor was willing to make a stat dec but couldn't print it for lack of ink, so I volunteered to print it for them but then discovered I couldn't print it because my wifi was down and my computer talks to my printer via wifi. Attempting to use my phone as a hotspot didn't seem to work with my printer. So that was frustrating.
   Fortunately that evening the wifi was back, and I was able to print the form and bring it to the neighbor. Then I got working on the NOIM form (the one needing to be filed with the celebrant), lined one up to meet with one in the morning, filled out the form, went to print it and.... despite wifi at this time working the printer wouldn't work. Tried everything in my limited IT knowledge to troubleshoot it, ie resetting both the computer and printer, running the printer troubleshooter function on the computer (which confirmed there was an error but aside from ruling out a lot of things couldn't identify what the error was). I ended up spending two hours trying to make the printer print and couldn't do so, staying up unusually late until 12:30. This was very very frustrating.

New news since last updates:
   I was meeting the celebrant at 8am, so I got up at six and went to the general store, even though printing is not a service they provide I was desperate and hoped maybe they'd take pity on me. They didn't. The post office here which makes copies doesn't open till 9 and I was standing outside the general store pondering whether I had any chance of finding a place open that early in the larger town (pop 11,000) of colac 15 min away when another neighbor of my aquantaince happened along. In our "how's it going"s I mentioned my frustrating problem and he said he had a home office and he'd gladly print it for me after he got his coffee. We walked to his place and printed it out, problem solved!

   As of tonight (the penultimate day of the month, "by the end of November" being the timeframe I was told the laws would become stricter in), I have the necessary two stat decs, and the celebrant has promised to send me the filed documents in the morning. Really down to the wire!

Here's a very kafka-esque thing. In support of the application for the fiancee visa, they want me to file a "notice of intended marriage." This NOIM requires me to specify a date within the next 18 months we intend to have our wedding. But the fiancee visa has a minimum processing time of 23 months. So in order to apply for the visa to get married I have to swear we intend to get married sooner than the visa can possibly allow us to. 🤷‍♂️

(unrelated pictures, from the Geelong Waterfront a few weeks ago)

Also, this visa application has an aspect that's a lot more annoying than the gathering of mountains of obscure information that hte other visas required -- I need to chase around my friends to get them to make "statutory declarations" ("stat decs") attesting that Cristina and my relationship is true and genuine, but this stat dec needs to be done a certain way on a certain form witnessed by one of a certain set of kinds of people, and all done exactly right. So far I've had two friends do it only to have the lawyers say it wasn't done right and another friend who's been telling me she'll do it "definitely tomorrow" for over two weeks. I hate that requires both extensively nagging my friends and also being delayed by other people. ):

Edit edit: another neighbor is willing to sign one for me but her printer is out of ink, so I offered to print it and bring it over but my wifi has been down for four days (I also spent hours with the telecom about this this morning) and apparently my computer won't talk to my printer without the wifi working so I can't print it, at this point I want to scream and throw something out the window.

Update 12 hours later: internet (inexplicably) functional again, printer worked a few hours ago to print out the one copy of the form for the neighbor. Have an appointment in the morning to meet with a registered celebrant to sign the NOIM and.... my printer now inexplicably refuses to print!! I've turned both the computer and printer off and on again, run the troubleshooter (it detects an error but can't identify anything about it), manually checked every setting I could think of. Arrghhh why is EVERYTHING going wrong about this??!??!

   It seemed like the ongoing struggle to get my fiancee a visa couldn't get worse but it seems like it may have.

Background
   But first let me summarize everything up to this point. So Cristina lives in Venezuela, where I, as an American, cannot go, and being from a collapsing country she can't just come to Australia on any easy-to-get visa.

   After we got engaged in September 2019, to get her here we would get married (was advised the Australian government would be unlikely to recognize our relationship as bona fide unless we were officially married already, but also we planned to get married regardless), but as we can't do it in either of our home countries and many countries require at least one of the parties to the marriage to be a resident of that country it took some figuring out but finally we settled on Bahamas in April 2020. Once married, I could list her as my partner on the permanent residency (PR) visa application I then had in the works and voila when that came through she'd have legal residency here as my partner on the visa. We began making solid plans, booking an appointment with the wedding officer and flights and starting to work on hotels ... and then Covid happened.

   My work visa was running out and I couldn't wait any longer to file for the PR, so I had to do so without her listed as the partner. Once my own PR visa was approved in February of this year we immediately turned our attention to the visa situation for Cristina. The immigration lawyer recommended a "prospective marriage visa" and, as Cristina was by now mid-way through her anesthesiology residency, the lawyer advised, which I'll quote because I feel a bit salty about it now: "I think the application can commence at the end of the year as she’s still completing her postgraduate course. The prospective marriage visa will take around 12 months to process and by the time it’s being assessed, she should be ready to come to Australia etc."

   So we cooled our heels and twiddled our figurative fingers, anxiously waiting to see eachother again. Now, the other day, it getting towards a year from Cristina's graduation from this program, we emailed the lawyer again.

The Latest
   So first of all the former lawyer is apparently no longer with the firm. The "director" (as they apparently call all business chief executives here) advised us that it takes "23-30" months for the prospective partner visa to go through. Here we let a year go by and now, after two years have already passed since we became engaged, we are told we probably have to wait two to two-and-a-half MORE years!! (if we get married before then it would make the prospective marriage visa application invalid and we'd have to start over with a partner visa).
   AND THAT'S NOT ALL

   He advises that sometime beween next week and the end of this month they are going to change the partner visa framework TO MAKE IT HARDER -- instead of one partner visa application I will have to apply for eligibility to sponsor a partner and then she applies as my sponsee. Since the lawyer advised me it's not possible to get the application in in a week (I didn't think it would be but had to ask) this situation will probably apply to us. With just our luck it will probably shoot up the costs (did I mention they're currently $13,239.90 Ausdollars (/ $9,757.61 US)) as well as increase the time. ::grinds teeth::

   When I told Cristina these things, via whatsapp (I was at work when the email came in), she expressed various lamentations and "It's too long, I can't take another year" and then didn't respond for most of an hour, which left me doubly freaking out, that perhaps she was despairing of this crazy odyssey and throwing in the towel. But fortunately it turned out that was not the case.

   So that's the current situation. At least soon we'll be able to travel again and we'll at least be able to meet in a third country again so it won't necessarily be another two years before even seeing eachother (though it might be one entire additional year, her boss isn't big on giving them any time off at all from the residency program).