Summer time and the living is easy, goes that famous old number. Hardly! We have a holiday planned – we’ve promised the kids a New Zealand trip and we’ve got to save up for it. I’ve been penny pinching for a few months now and I’m still a long way away from my target of AED35,000. I get free annual leave tickets from the airline I work for – a blessing not to be taken for granted, and one that makes me the envy of family and friends alike, but we still need serious cash for hotels, attractions and other activities.
We want to do a three-week holiday this time. And if that’s nothing unusual for anyone, it’s one big deal for me. No one takes more than a couple of weeks off at a time where I work. Reason being we get free tickets, so people like to break their leave up into many bits so they get away more often. Works for most being a largely expat workforce, but if you have kids in school like us, these breaks must be restricted to the school holidays.
In our case, we’re also unfortunately holders of passports that don’t afford us visa-free travel to most countries. So we need to factor in visa processing time and costs – lengthy, annoying and expensive processes, involving reams of paperwork for some countries. Australia being one of the most punishing for honest-to-goodness visa applicants and New Zealand or Singapore being among the smoothest. And since you can’t get to NZ without a transit visa for Australia, we’re in for the long haul.
The hubby gets down to the visa applications for Australia. Much grumbling ensues. We’re not even getting out of the aircraft in Sydney, why do we need transit visas? Well actually, we might be disembarking, I tell him. Whatever, we’re not entering Australia, so this is ridiculous, he says. I agree. It is. And the paperwork is unbelievable, a separate application for every member of the family, a veritable tome it looks like.
Armed with the printed tome, the hubby makes it to VFS, the visa process handling agent for the Australian embassy in Dubai. There, he’s informed that he needs to bring every travelling member of the family along. We need to be finger printed and photographed, much like they do with the “wanted” people of this world, making us feel quite unwanted. So the hubby returns, fuming from the ears, with the said tome in hand. He messages me to take time off from work and says the kids will have to miss a day of school.
The next day, I take time off work, the kids bunk school and we head back to VFS. Since we lost our appointment made a month ago the day before, we had to wait in line. It took a couple of hours before we were called in. The hubby and I put our finger prints and mug shots on record, one at a time, behind closed doors, then the kids go in one at a time to be duly biometricised as well. I asked if I could stay with my 9-year old daughter and they let me. Thank goodness for that because she looked a tad nervous and I was not leaving her in there alone!
The kids did not require finger printing, but the photographing process was traumatic enough. Wow, just like they do to criminals, says my 14-year old, feeling quite chuffed with himself. Yeah, here, we’re all guilty till proven innocent, I mumble. We’re finally done.
You can go now, the lady in charge tells me. How long? I ask. It takes up to a month. We leave wishing we were going back to Singapore instead. Easy online process, and the visas come to you by email in two days. Why can’t it be that simple for everyone? We’re respectable family people, we’re proven we have good jobs, have property, have decent enough bank balances and interests in Dubai we can’t possibly want to leave behind to disappear into a foreign country, so why do they put us through these nonsensical processes? But all we can do is feel incensed and humiliated. Some passport holders are just more equal than others!
Fast forward a month and we have the Auzzie passports in hand, the hubby then fills in the forms for the NZ visas and heads to VFS, the visa agency, again. This time, it’s just a single visa application, a single fee unlike for Australia where you pay per applicant, and the family members don’t need to go. The visas reach us within the week. A welcome relief after what we’ve been through for Australia.
Visas done, we’re now free to continue the holiday planning. What an ordeal! Next time, we should go somewhere we get visas on arrival, says the visibly agitated hubby. I agree!
And oh, we found out if we have to go to NZ again next year, and we might like to, we have to go through this whole ordeal again with the Auzzie visas. Why can’t they keep our records on record and just let us through without the paperwork and the fuss? That’s the process, madam, is what I get by way of an explanation. Who looks into these things? I have some useful suggestions that will make our lives and those of the embassy staff a whole lot easier. And maybe increase tourism to Australia. They can do with the extra income from tourists, I believe. Any takers? Or should we take a boat next time? That might be easier.
brendal
Random Ramblings 