Actually, I wish I had this passport - good for any length of time anywhere in the world. No restrictions, just come and go as you please. Wouldn't it be great in a perfect world?
Yesterday, Nori and I went back to the immigration office so I could submit an appeal to my visa denial along with other documents and more money. I'll know in a month whether I've secured a one year residential visa or not. Regardless, I have a little insert serving as a temporary visa until the end of July. Atleast I'm "legal" for now.
My friend Lara is experiencing the same challenges in Lithuania. But her Nori is currently training for the Olympics in the states. Lara speaks broken Lithuanian, but immigration language is often so technical and she has no one there to help at the moment. Can you imagine? It's been almost impossible for Lara to fulfill their paperwork obligations and quite a hastle, seeing that all along she has only committed to living in Lithuania for a year. Lara's roommate, Austra Skujytė, would normally be of great help but the Olympics sort of got in the way. Austra won the silver medal in heptathlon in Athens 2004 for Lithuania and she's currently training for Beijing. So Lara is sort of "stuck" trying to figure things out. (Side note: I hope you'll follow Austra in the Heptathlon events which are scheduled for August 15th.) I can't imagine trying to overcome these language barriers without the help of Nori and Peter here in Budapest. Unless you've experienced this personally, you'll never know what immigration exhaustion is really like :D
Seeing that the goal of our work in Budapest is to one day hand off the work to nationals with very few Americans, it's a good thing actually. The best part about it -- besides knowing their own culture so well and speaking the language fluently -- is that Hungarians won't have these "bloody" visa issues! :D
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Immigration and Paperwork
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4 comments:
I do hope that gets sorted out quickly. Trust me, being a foreigner in the US is a mountain of paperwork so I know what you are going through!
How cool for your friend to be living with an Olympian!
Visas seem to be a hassle wherever one goes. In my role as head of IT human resources at a large university, I often have to navigate the complexities of various types of work and student permits. I can't begin to imagine trying to figure it out in anything other than my first language!
Good luck!
Akshaye - so you can relate. It's a pain in the derriére for sure! Yes, Austra's great. They met at KU so now that Lara is living in Lith it's really cool.
Bunnygirl - sounds like you've got an important and complex job. I can hardly imagine figuring out various nations standards and what would be needed on the US end. Interesting work. Cool.
Hey I am very sorry to hear that. If i would be in lithuania right now i would offer my help... (i am lithuanian, and sorry for crapy english) unfortunately... well or not unfortunately i live now in berlin, germany, and have lots of problems with arbeitsamt and other official institutions and ugly paper work.
I speak only very broken german, so i guess i can imagine what you and your friend are going through. though i am so lucky i dont need any visa....
good luck.
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