Indian Visa Nightmare (Continued)

Previous:

Nov 10: STUCK IN PORTLAND: 6 WEEKS LATER AND STILL NO VISA

Sept 28: HOW EXTENDING OUR INDIAN VISAS LED US TO PORTLAND, OR

On October 3, 2013, Josh submitted his application for a new Indian Business Visa.

Two weeks later they asked for an extra document.

Since we had to get this document from India, it took 8 days to get it and submit it.

More weeks went by, and still no visa.

Josh called many times and emailed many times to ask about the status of the application, never to get a straight answer.

Yesterday, 46 days from the date of submission, someone finally responded to an email saying that they never got the submitted document. Really?!

Ridiculous. The process is supposed to take 4-10 business days, by the way.

So Josh submitted the document a THIRD time and got a response a few minutes later that they would send the package to the consulate the next day (which is today.) Or so I understood. In India, English is the secondary official language, so verbal communication is not a problem but get them to text you or email you and it all becomes gibberish.

The email response that Josh received yesterday after the third submission was, verbatim:

“I don’t understand why it has taken so long to complete, but this will be matched now, but sent tomorrow to the consulate.”

That was the whole email. You tell me if it makes sense.

Here are a few better examples of English Gibberish from our Indian partners and workers who have very good speaking English. Verbatim:

“Hi joshua sir good morrning and evrithing is good hear ,and how r u and mani mam?”

“Hi joshua sir ,and last 25 day,s he dont come avar house and he done vark with as so dont send money and anny think sir ,now i have drayvar so from 26 when u go us i work with u u tell me anny think now bez i am your workar now.”

“Ok i tell adinat and you ragiteshan no i give you on after 15 day i send you buz i mith ca anf he toled mi it come on 15 day”

You get the point.

I can understand them better than Josh because I found out that they are writing English as they hear it. They write phonetically. English is not a phonetic language but Spanish, my native language, is. So, I can understand them better, or at least, their main point.

Anyway, even though it was very frustrating that after many weeks, many calls and many emails, they said they never got the document, I was still happy to hear that they finally responded, and they finally got the document, and there finally will be some progress. (At least I’m hopeful.) We are crossing our fingers to get the passport back before the end of this week. But then, it’s not over yet. We need to submit my application, and deal with that. Another two weeks if everything goes well.

I don’t even know what to do with my application. As a foreign national married to a foreign national with a long term visa, I can apply for an Entry Visa which will be granted co-terminus to my husband’s visa, meaning I get the same duration. I was planning on getting 5 or 10 years with this rule, but I recently found out that as of October of this year, they won’t give a visa for longer than 6 months to anyone with a non-US passport in the jurisdiction that I am located in. Really?! This means I have to find a way to apply outside of my jurisdiction (nightmare), or come back to the US again after 6 months to get a new visa (nightmare), or extend my visa in India (the worst nightmare of them all).

Ugh.

Indian bureaucracy will be the cause of death for Josh and Mani.

At this point we have absolutely no clue where we are going to spend Christmas. It could be here in Portland, it could be back in India, or even some other state in the U.S. if we attempt to get me a longer term visa in a different jurisdiction. Who knows, we could end up in Canada for all I know. It really is up to God.

…

On the positive side, something very happy happened yesterday.

Back in North Carolina, before we moved to India last July, we had two lovely cats which we had to give away to a new home because of many reasons we couldn’t bring them with us to India. I was very very sad about the whole situation; they were my favorite. After moving to India, for about two weeks, their new owners kept contact with us but mostly with concerns like: Cubby is not using the litter box, Simba is not eating, Cubby is eating all the food, etc… And then, it was silence. We stopped hearing from them. I always wondered if they were happy; if they had finally adapted. They were both adopted from a shelter, and it had taken a long time for Simba to trust us, so I worried mostly about him. Cubby didn’t enjoy the 30min car ride to their new home, but we knew he would do okay, he was the least troubled one. 

And yesterday, more than 4 months later, I found them on Facebook! Their new mommy had posted pictures of them in Halloween costumes and they looked healthy and happy! We never dressed them up in anything, so it was a good sign. And the pictures showed plenty of pillows, beds, and cat toys for them. They are surely spoiled. Even more so than we used to spoil them. It made me incredibly happy, I even got some real tears of joy and that joyful feeling really filled me and lingered for the rest of the day. I even made brownies.

I miss you guys!