OK. We’re legal for another year. I THINK, on balance,
we are glad about that. This week’s blog will be about the trials and travails
of visa and Foreign Resident Registration Office (FRRO) registration. This may
not be the most exciting post for those of you following along. However, the
blog is also a record for us of these three years and this is definitely a part
of the experience we want to document.
You may remember the difficulties Rae had in
getting her original accompanying spouse visa for India. It took weeks, several
iterations back and forth between her and the consulate, and finally the
intervention of our attorney. (For those of you who are planning on visiting, the
tourist visa is easier but you should still plan on a month to get it, just to
be safe). Well, once you get to India, the administrative hassles continue.
Foreigners are required to register with the FRRO within 14 days of arriving in
India. This process is an interesting amalgam of low and high tech with a
generous helping of inefficient bureaucracy. Despite having someone very
familiar with the FRRO process to help, it took me several trips and tens of hours
of his and my time to get the registration done last year. Lessons learned, it
only took Rae one trip and less than five hours to get registered.
With all of that history in our minds, we have
been marking the time when we needed to renew our visas and registrations. My apprehension
was also raised a bit because the person who helped last year is no longer with
MAII. Anyway, we have had mid-April in our mind since last April. We decided we
were going to start the process a month early so there would not be any
pressure. So, about the 15th of March, I started the process of visa
and registration renewal.
One of the key findings from last year is FRRO
now has an online application. This APPEARS to be a step towards modernity but
that would only be true if the website actually worked well. As it is getting
the form completed requires three or four attempts. And this is the easiest
part of the process. To make matters worse, as I was filling in the form, I was
required to put in the expiration date of our current visa and registration.
Whaaatt?? Despite KNOWING, KNOWING I say, that our visa and registration expire
in April, a year after I arrive, it turns out they expired on March 12th.
Instead of being a month early I was a week late. Technically, Rae and I were
in India illegally; not the mental picture I usually have when I hear the term
illegal alien.
Well, I really start to scramble now. I ask our
Finance Manager to quickly as possible get the supporting documents together: a
letter from MAII requesting they grant us visas, a letter from MAII saying they
will take financial responsibility for us; a copy of my employment agreement; and
a copy of our lease; marriage license; and Rae’s name change form, just to name
some of the documentation. All of these
have to be certified as being authentic documents. Added to this are copies of
passport pictures, copies of our passports, visas, and registration papers. It
took a few days to get all of this in order and certified. Now we are even more
overdue. Whew! Now all we have to do is upload all of these documents onto the
FRRO website and get an appointment to go meet with an FRRO officer.
So, I scan each page of each document and
picture, not an inconsequential task, and get ready to upload them onto the
FRRO website. The pictures upload, no problem. First document – won’t upload.
Repeated attempts with the same result. Well, I’ll try a second and then a
third document. No success with any of them. ARGHH! Okay, our forms are filled
and pictures are uploaded, maybe it will allow me to make an appointment
without uploading the other documents and I’ll just bring them with me. No such
luck. You can’t make an appointment until all the documents are uploaded. Well,
we are “Surely” Out of Luck now. We can’t renew without an appointment; we can’t
get an appointment without uploading the documents; we can’t upload the
documents. It reminds me a little of the poem, “For want of a nail, the shoe
was lost....”
I really didn’t know what to do, and then I
remembered that there is a member of the Church in another branch who is an
immigration attorney. I sent him an email stating I wanted to engage his
services. This was Friday night. By Sunday, I still hadn’t heard from him but I
knew he would be at a District meeting that night. I thought I would ask him
then if he would help us and make an appointment to meet with him. As I was
heading out the door, Rae suggested I take the file of documents with me. I
thought, “That can’t hurt; maybe he can give me quick advice about what I was
doing wrong,” so I grabbed them and headed out for the meeting.
After the meeting he came over to me and said, “I
got your message and I would be glad to help. Do you have your papers with you?”
Of course, thanks to Rae, I did so I handed them to him. He leafed through the
papers and was waiting for the opportunity to set an appointment when he said, “Well,
let’s go get this taken care of. President Massey, can we use the computer and
scanner in your office?” So rather than setting an appointment, he took the
time, (about three hours) on a Sunday night, to get our paperwork squared away
and appointments set. I kept asking him to send me a bill for his time but he
hasn’t yet and I don’t really suppose he will. One thing he told me was that
because our visas were already expired that another step would be required. It
had to go to the embassy, a step normally not required on renewal. Yikes, more time. We wouldn’t have cared except Rae’s booked to
fly to the US on April 9th, and can’t fly with an expired visa.
Monday at 11:30 Rae arrived at the campus and she
and Ramdas (our new FRRO expert) headed over to our appointment. I should say
that on Thursday Ramdas had come into my office with one of the FRRO officers.
The FRRO officers are on campus quit frequently. 60% of our students are not from
India and they also have to register as well as get their student visas. Well,
Ramdas explained to the Officer that I also was needing to renew my visa and
registration. When he heard that, he said, “When you get your appointment, let
me know and I will make sure everything goes smoothly.”
He was a man of his word. When we got to the FRRO
office, instead of standing in a queue to get a number to stand in another
queue to begin to have our file reviewed, we went up to the FRRO officer’s
office. He quickly reviewed our file; rearranged the order of a few things; and
said, “When you go down to the main room, see this man and let him know I have
reviewed the documents.” We did so and in less than an hour we both had our
visas and registrations renewed, (no trip to the embassy). We are legal for
another year.
All of this really is to just explain why we are
late with our blog this week. Sorry.
Namaste.
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