Milizlinx

A No Picture Week

A piece of advice: if you're going to have a baby overseas, make sure you can return to Canada at least before he turns one, preferably before he is 6-7 months old! Our experience with Jasmin's passport, citizenship, and visas has not been fun. Lots of applications, research, waiting, juggling dates - for 7 months now, and we still haven't got it sorted out! Of course, there are many unique facts to this case (we only get visas for 6 months at a time, Cambodia is unusual in requiring passport validity 6 months after your visa expiry, etc.); it might not be so problematic in another time or place.

The Story in Full

As soon as we could after her birth, we applied for Jasmin's Canadian passport and proof of citizenship (needed to get a proper Canadian passport). It took longer than expected due to passport photo specifications, a fender bender, and short office hours.

Jasmin got a temporary passport just in time for us to return to Phnom Penh before our Thai visas run out. Or so we thought; on our way out we discovered we'd overstayed our visas by two days and had to pay out our last Thai money in fines.

Her temporary passport is for one year only (until July 2008). A little research turned up the fact that Cambodia's visa laws require a valid passport for 6 months after your visa expiry date (February 2008). As the Citizenship card is supposed to arrive in Feb, we should be able to just squeak by. It also surfaced that Cambodia possibly will give Jasmin a visa until April.

Just in case, we dug a little deeper for other possibilities. More research and a flurry of emails with embassies discovered the possibility of a limited extension to Jasmin's passport- 9 months more (April 2009). We breathed a sigh of relief and began considering later departure dates.

November came and went without the citizenship card showing up. All our Cambodian visas needed renewing (we only get 6 month visas). Experienced counsel told us that Jasmin would not likely be issued a new visa without the extension on her passport, so we made a few trips to the embassy and applied for the promised extension.

Last week we received her extended passport. It is valid until September 2008 only, not the April 2009 we were expecting! What!?! The extension was counted from the date of application, not from the expiry date of the passport!! And the citizenship card has not yet arrived; indeed, we have not even received the notice saying the application is in process.

So, it looks like God wants us home in Canada earlier than we thought. Unless her citizenship card shows up. Unless Cambodia gives her a longer visa anyhow (it has happened before). We are still not settled when we will be coming to Canada! I'm getting rather antsy to have it settled so I can plan properly - I really don't want to have to do EVERYTHING in the last few weeks before leaving!