Colorful cramped Old Delhi

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Saga of departure, Clearance etc from UAEU, UAE

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I write this out of a sense of gratitude to a whole flock of UGRU people who sent me advice on various visa problems that cropped up with my Philipino wife whom I needed to bring here for a visit so we could fly on together with our children to Turkey and the USA. So this deals with that problem plus my final clearance process from the university. I’ll leave out the packing and moving!
The first problem in our knot of dilemmas was my wife’s one-month tourist visa; many campus experts said I wouldn’t be able to sponsor her since my residence visa was close to expiry itself. In fact I was able to without problems, at Al Jimi immigration, a bureaucratic victory I described at the time. They issued me the visa, I sent it to my wife, and she used it to get into the country legally. (Later we’d pay a heavy price for getting the one-month rather than the slightly more expensive two month).
My wife’s tourist visa caused us a major problem when we applied for another tourist visa to Turkey where we have frequently gone for vacations and business in Bodrum. When she applied this time, however (in the past we got one day processing), the consulate turned us down, saying they couldn’t grant her a visa based on her visit visa to the UAE! They insisted that the only way they could grant the visa was for my wife to apply in her home country, the Philippines! Disaster! Or apparently. The rest of the family as US passport holders had no such problem of course. We had plenty of evidence of legitimate business in Turkey, onward tickets to the US, and her obvious mother- and wife- hood (arguing against a supposed illegal labor motive). After all our planning, our case fell on deaf ears. We were stunned, stymied, speechless.
After recovering from shock, we went back to the window to argue for our case. I showed the sympathetic but firm (& Tagalog speaking) clerk pages from Marivic’s passport sporting both UAE residence visas and Turkish tourist visas. We flourished once again our colorful medallioned marriage certificate… and mentioned that we’d have to sell the house if we couldn’t go there together. The clerk was obviously swayed by one or more of these pleas, and disappeared again behind the magic curtain where the power person was concealed.
We waited a few more agonizing moments before another women emerged from the same place, the mysterious god herself, and crisply asked us for Marivic’s passport, birth certificate and marriage certificate, then returned to the mystical place she occupied. She returned a few minutes later with the documents and the precious visa stamped into Marivic’s passport! Halas! Blessing Turkey and all its inhabitants but especially the good consul (who’d rushed back behind the screen to avoid our effusive thanks), we waited to leave the embassy before celebrating with the customary high and low fives. (Paul Fernandes of ETE hearing the story added that he thought the onward tickets to the US were the most compelling argument).
Now (if any readers are still awake) for the arduous fandango of “clearance.” Because I worked under the relatively light conditions of a visiting contract the last two years, I had a comparatively easy “clearance” or “cancellation” process; the visiting contract is quicker and less complex to disencumber oneself from than the full time one. But the main thing about leaving the UAE is to keep in mind that you can’t keep all the deadlines in mind at the same time especially when you have extra exigencies and the memory challenges I have (laugh).
The clearances – a list of about 6-8. But I never saw the list, so negotiated it bit by bit as these were made apparent to me.
Head of Dept (automatic by email)
Dean of College (automatic by email)
Library (do it yourself; plus pay the fine for a lost book).
Help desk – (equipment issued; none for me)
Itisalat (have to go there, pay any bills, and apply for it and pick up the next day)
(no utilities or house contract/landlord issues since put up in hotel)
Immigration (cancellation of residence visa done by HR)
This latter is required before you get your last pay deposited.
There is no published info on the process that I know of, so you may not have abundant information about the process as you proceed. For example, after I thought I had qualified for the final, liberating residence visa cancellation – HR told me I had to show them my wife’s flight ticket. In fact my wife’s visa was/is an airport visa so this requirement was a mistake and slowed down my clearance by a day or so. It’s my fault that I didn’t point this out to them myself. The process turns you into a passive automaton though with no will of your own.
Meanwhile bills had to be paid – the moving company dunned me yesterday for the completion of payment, and when we leave the Danat Hotel we’ll have to cough up 20 days of hotel bills!
My residence visa cancellation finally came thru yesterday although why it took so long I can’t explain but perhaps because the item passed between the university visa section and the gov’t office in Al Jimi. With the salary drop still in suspense, this formality wasn’t an academic issue. Finally a few days before flight day, an email message from HR announced the long awaited salary payment, which was less than I expected. Will it show up in my bank today, and if not, when? Fortunately our plane tickets were already paid for; we had to get them early, ahead of time, to qualify for my wife’s reduced visa overstay fine (called an “outpass”).
Yes, yet another bureaucratic snarl! You see, my wife went over her nonrenewable 30 day visa on July 5 and in principle was accumulating fines – dhs 100 per day!
For this, we learned, there is another bureaucratic procedure called the “outpass”—a stop gap measure which allows the overstayer to pay a portion of the fines provided the overstay isn’t more than a week. We learned about this and put it into practice in time.
We only had to pay 5 days of fines, about ½ the normal amt – of dhs 100 per day. All this trouble came from my parsimoniously not having gotten my wife a two-month visa at the beginning. It doesn’t always pay to be a cheapskate!
So far these procedures alone wouldn’t have been so overwhelming; we had another very important job, however, during the same few weeks my wife and children were here: to apply for and obtain my younger daughter’s Philippines passport.
Why so, many asked. Well the fact is Marisol was born in this country and could have been registered as a Philippines citizen at that time (2008); instead we registered her as an American citizen since that seemed the obvious choice, never considering whether dual citizenship would be advantageous for her.
During the last two years, however, while we were compelled to live apart, wife & daughters in the Philippines and me here, we discovered that Marisol became liable after a few months or so to a stiff visa overstay penalty that ran as high as $100 per month! (my other daughter is a dual citizen, having been born in the Philippines, afterward coming here and being registered as a citizen in the US). We didn’t want to burden Marisol or ourselves with such a financial burden in the future should we, or she, spend long periods in the Philippines. My wife informed me that according to Philippines immigration laws, children can stay on their entrance visa one year; but they must renew and get an extension visa every two months (more than $100). The fee goes up progressively with each extension, plus penalties for lateness, (sometimes as much as dhs 100 per day!)
The duration from application to pick up was as promised, about one month. This speaks well of the efficiency and reliability of the Philippines Embassy in Abu Dhabi.
We picked up Marisol’s precious document yesterday and celebrated with a blowout at Luce.
So those are some of the recent joys of from the bureaucratic world of visas and passports in the UAE.
Diary – July 12 (more suspense)
On departure day, two problems: sill haven’t rid our selves of all our excess property (framed photos for example) –second, no pay deposit appears in my account. Today is Friday and it’s Ramadan (we say welcome to this additional confusing factor we’ve had so many puzzles to resolve, the day wouldn’t feel right without a dozen more impossibilities), so can’t expect to do much business today. We need to change dirhams into dollars before we leave since the national currency is worthless outside the country. Saturday maybe but we’ll be gone if we catch our flight tonight though the flight is actually at 2:00 am tomorrow.
It’s the last day of our 17 day (!!!) extended stay at Danat. Thank god they’re giving us a break here on the room rate! Danat agreed to the “company rate” of 300/day, which is close to pure charity. That means we owe 4800 for the room, plus extras such as room service food last night. Though with only 7000 left in our account, it looks like we will have to use savings to finance our departure.
We’ll have to use credit or debit.
Our next communiqué should be from Istanbul, Turkey, a big inshallah from now! Wish us luck. No better yet pray!

 (also published on Mid East Review of Books: www.mideastbook.blogspot.com)

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