A few years ago, a close friend planned to get married in South-East Asia. Several of our friends decided to make the trip over for the festivities. My partner and I even planned a longer trip around it.
At the time, I was living and working in Australia, but was a national of a country notorious for always being close to/at the top of the list of countries with the worst passport. The list is based on how few countries you can gain entry to without applying for a visa in advance of travel. Needless to say, I had to apply for a visa.
I completed my visa application and got my paperwork ready to submit many months in advance of my anticipated travel. Having plenty of firsthand experience with arduous visa processes for various countries, I thought it best that I lodge my application in person at the consulate.
At the consulate, I was informed by the immigration officer that my visa application was incomplete.
In addition to the paperwork I had brought with me, I was required to include a letter of approval from their in-country immigration office, clearing me to enter the country (for security reasons, of course).
To get this letter, I would need someone who was a current resident of the country to invite me to visit and apply on my behalf for this approval in-country. Because I was only going as a tourist to attend my friend’s wedding, I didn’t know anyone in the country.
When I queried how I could get a letter from within the country if I did not know anyone who lived there, the immigration officer simply shrugged. I asked how I could possibly get a visa if I was required to get a letter from within the country that I needed the visa to enter.
The immigration officer said, quite plainly, that I could submit my application as is, but it would definitely be rejected. Not really an answer to my question, but I guess that wasn’t his problem.
I realised I was not going to get an answer for how to navigate this process successfully. So I left consulate without submitting my application. I contacted my friend getting married and let her know the situation. She contacted the hotel hosting the wedding to see if they could assist. The hotel staff took several months to find out what the process entailed for them, requesting all our identity and travel information multiple times.
Ultimately, they came back to us saying it cost us each several hundreds of dollars and there was no guarantee that we would be granted security clearance. Oh, and it would take a month at least for the process; this was 3 weeks before the wedding.
Unfortunately, my story does not have a happy ending.
Despite the months of trying to find a solution, the few of us stuck in this situation (and my poor partner, who very sweetly stuck by my side and decided not to go if I couldn’t) had to skip going to the wedding and missed out on what was apparently an epic celebration.
The irony of all this is that if I had been living back home in my country of origin, I would have been able to obtain a visa in 3 days, as my friend’s family who lived back there were able to. But for some reason that I cannot fathom, I couldn’t be cleared to travel as a tourist to this particular SE Asian country, even though I had travel visas for neighbouring countries and had security clearance to live permanently in Australia.
