This fall has been a season of visa acquisition — yes, the same as last year, but even more complicated. It’s December and we are still waiting on one last piece to fall into place, Carter’s Emirates ID. Then we will finally all be legal residents once again.
Why did it take so long this time? Well, it’s a series of unfortunate inconveniences that snowballed into a frantic race to the finish last week. First, when Josh changed jobs, all of our old visas were cancelled instead of transferred because his new company/local office is solely American owned so there’s a special visa process to go through. Next, when Josh went to get his residence visa installed in his passport, the page that he had left wasn’t valid to put a visa in (who even knows why), so he had to file to get another passport, get it back, and then get his visa before they could even start the process for us.
In the meantime, our residence visas had a 30 day grace period, but instead of being able to file an extension, we had to physically leave the country to get a renewal which meant we had to do a last minute border run to Oman. Also, Josh couldn’t go across the border with us because his visa was in process so he couldn’t legally leave the country.
So we pulled the kids out of school at noon, headed to Al Ain (border town with Oman), dropped Josh off at a coffee shop, and the kids and I headed to the border to get legal again. Since my Arabic speaker husband usually handles all interaction with border people, I was NOT looking forward to trying to communicate and understand the process. It’s like trying to navigate with DMV customer service people who all speak really quietly and with a thick accent. It felt like I needed one of those old fashioned ear trumpets as I kept saying, “I’m sorry, what did you say?” as Carter laughed at my deafness and interpreted for me.
It also didn’t help that they kept asking “visa?” and I’d say, “yes, our visas are expired, we need to get new ones” when what they really wanted was my VISA CARD for payment. If they had just said, “50 aed please,” then I would have known to hand over my visa card, but when you are purchasing a visa it is not helpful to ask a person “visa?” and expect them to know what you’re talking about. This happened on both sides of the border and it felt like a conversation of “Who’s on First” as we went in circles until I figured out what they wanted.
I finally made it through the border gauntlet, out of UAE, into Oman, and then back into UAE with all the proper stamps and new tourist visas, and then thankfully Josh drove the 2 hours back home. That gave us 30 more days on the clock.
Then we had to redo medical checkups/blood tests/chest X-rays (me and Carter) so we could get approved for health insurance (all before even applying for visas). But wait, Carter is over 18 and a boy so we had to submit a letter proving he is still in school and had to apply for a humanitarian waiver to be able to sponsor him here. Once those were approved and he passed medical, Josh had to go pay a deposit that we’ll get back when he leaves the country (to insure he doesn’t overstay). Then Caleb had to go for fingerprinting, because he’s over 15. Josh has been running between work and government offices for the past few weeks, trying to get it all in in time for the kids to be able to travel with school in mid-november.
The last straw was was when I went to apply for Caleb’s visa to go to India with the school volleyball team. He still didn’t have his residence visa, “any day now, inshallah,” but we thought he should be able to travel as a tourist on a US passport. I submit for the evisa and get an error message: there is less than 6 months remaining on the issued passport. Visa can not be issued. ACKKKKKKKKK!
Somewhere in the mess of administrative tasks, I had overlooked that the kids’ passports would be crossing into no-mans land of 6 months left of validity. Calling them 5 year passports is a joke when you can only use them for 4.5 years, but whatever. #soapbox I knew they were coming up soon, but thought they expired in May, not April, and suddenly we had 3 kids with useless passports. ARGGGGH.
I already had scheduled an appointment to renew them so our party of 5 tromped in to get our passports, raised our hands and swore that all the information was true on the 5,345 forms and photocopies that we turned in and crossed our fingers that they’d come back in time for the boys to go on another school trip at the end of November.
In the meantime, the pieces of our puzzle began to fit into place. I wasn’t sure if the government would issue a residence visa in a passport that had less than 6 months validity on it. It turns out the 2 younger kids passed, but Carter’s application, since he’s over 18, got special attention and it got kicked back. Tick-tock, tick tock . . . the passports came back right at the last minute (while Josh was in Dubai all week, of course) so I took off work to pick them up at the embassy, Carter arranged to meet the guy from Josh’s company to pass it off to him, and he got the visa installed the very next day, just in time. The kids leave for Oman in 2 days for a school enrichment trip — to get their advanced PADI dive certification.
We are still waiting for Carter’s Emirates ID to be completed. He can travel without it, but he needs that to make a medical appointment to take care of his knee/military waiver. That all feels minor in the grand scheme of hoop jumping that we’ve just accomplished. I’m sure we’ve done more than this in the past few months, but it feels like this is the only thing that has been accomplished. #finallylegal