Red Tape

One of the downsides of living overseas is the mountain of red tape you have to go through just to do normal everyday things - like be in the country legally, ship your stuff, open a bank account and get a passport. We’ve been through bureaucratic fun in quite a few countries now and its always a hair-pulling experience, filled with frustrations and hours spent on the phone and in dull government offices. The worst experience we had by far was when we moved to the Middle East. My husband’s work visa took about 6 weeks to process which was not bad, considering the amount of information and medical tests we had to do but my visa was dependant on his (given my lowly status as wife and woman!) and could not be applied for until he had arrived in the country. We were told it would take about a month - but it wasn’t until 3 months later after numerous phone calls and visits to the Embassy in London that I was finally able to join him.

Mexico has been a little better in this regard - although it took quite a while for our FM3 permits (residency) to be issued, at least we were able to enter the country as tourists and apply from there. Getting our stuff was a whole other problem, involving sending documents back and forth from Australia to Mexico, being told different stories by every person and then the boxes sitting in customs for several weeks. We arrived in Mexico in July 2006, but our boxes were not delivered until December! They arrived on Boxing Day, so it was like having 2 Christmas Days in a row.

During all this gallivanting around the world, we’ve managed to have 2 children born in 2 different countries, neither of them Australia, so the issue of citizenship and passports has come up often. In both cases we have planned trips back home not long after the babies were born for them to meet the family, which has put time pressure on getting travel documents. With Guerita the process was relatively simple. In those days, although it was post September 11 the security requirements were still fairly relaxed. We didn’t live in the capital city so we had to send off the application for her Australian citizenship and passport to the Embassy, who processed them together and sent them back, all with plenty of time to travel when she was 6 weeks old. We never found out whether she was entitled to citizenship in her country of birth. Somehow I doubted she would be, being a westerner born to non-Muslim parents. Besides, a passport from a Middle Eastern country is not generally a sought-after item.

We have discovered, however, that in the intervening years between Guerita’s and Chiq’s births, things have changed and passport application requirements are now much stricter. Again, we don’t live in the capital city, but instead of being able to courier the application to the Embassy, Chiq is now required to attend for a personal interview to get her first Australian passport. Travel in Mexico is not cheap and for one of us to “pop” down to Mexico city for a few days to visit the Embassy could cost upwards of USD$1000 including hotels etc! We were a little miffed when we found this out - it seems a bit rough to require this and given our plans to travel home a few months after Chiq’s birth, we were under pressure to work it out. Luckily Chiq is also eligible for a British passport (my husband was born in England) so the short term solution was to apply for her British passport (which, incidentally, could all be done by post) and have her travel into Australia on a visa. It somehow seemed very strange to be visiting “home” with a new baby who wasn’t even an Australian citizen yet and I wondered if I would be questioned about it at Immigration, but there was no problem. In actual fact, Chiq is also eligible for and has a Mexican passport on the basis of her birth here, so for some time she’s had dual citizenship, but not Australian!

The opportunity has finally arisen to tie a visit to Mexico City in with a holiday, so in 2 weeks time we’ll have a few days in Mexico and then 5 days at the beach in Playa del Carmen (just south of Cancun). We’re meeting my cousin and her husband who are on a round-the-world adventure, after which they’ll then make their way up to visit us at our home. So, I guess these passport requirements are not all bad - its given us an excuse to see Mexico City (and we’ve managed to do it without breaking the bank) and our baby will finally be an Aussie.

In all of this, I am definitely the odd one out - between the four of us, we (will) have 8 passports - My husband (Australian & British), Guerita (Australian & British), Chiq (Australian, British & Mexican) and poor old me - only Australian! You know what will happen if we travel to Europe - my husband and children will be waltzing through Immigration checkpoints while I’m left lining up with the undesirables!