The stage called ‘getting an Alien book’ is by far the most stressful. You never know whether to blame the visa agent, the system, yourself or someone else. You are never sure who’s telling the truth and even more frustrating, you don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. There’s nobody you can call in any office who can be of help to you. So you wait helplessly for your visa agent to do something magic for you. “Don’t get stressed,” she says “it will be fine”. I point out that it’s not her who’s in danger of having to leave the country for lack of a visa. She assures me that she is just as stressed as me but I doubt that very much.
The message comes back that the faceless nameless people at some government office have checked whether I work at the place I work at and have decided I do not work there although I am there almost every day all day. It later becomes clear that they actually never even came to check. This goes on – every time we re-submit the papers, we wait for 15 days just to get the response that I do not work at that office.
Eventually after 2 months of trying and me putting pressure on the visa agent to put pressure on her contacts (I am actually not sure she has any to be honest), the message come back that they finally believe I work at my office (even though they have still not come here). I am pleased to find I am not alone in this jungle of red tape and false starts as there is another guy at the office in a similar position. However he is having a much tougher time. Being from an African country, he gets to have an actual visit from a policeman, before he can apply for his alien certificate.
The upshot is that I have had a lot of stress and more expense because I had to have a kind of emergency month visa just because there were some administrative changes in the government departments which handle these matters. Now I have my Alien book and now I have my visa and I can breathe a sigh of relief – until next year. Apparently it will be simple next time, but that’s what they always say!