Living overseas is a fascinating thing in nearly every respect – historically, culturally, linguistically, logistically. You learn so much more than you ever anticipated, and you’d better learn it, because your continued viability overseas depends on you learning and following some very specific rules.
Passports get you in and out of your home country. In the United States it’s easy to take them for granted – anyone with the desire to can get a passport for a nominal fee and about a month’s worth of patience. Then you’re free to leave and re-enter the US at your leisure. Presuming you don’t have past legal issues that would make that problematic, and that you don’t develop legal issues outside the country that might want someone to not let you come back, or might incline the US to send you back to resolve those issues.
Passports are not a human right. They’re a right of US citizens, but for a lot of people in other countries there is no entitlement to a passport. Not only do you have to have patience and some money, you also have to have a legitimate reason why they would want to let you come and go from their country. Not everyone who applies is granted a passport.
That was certainly an eye-opener.
Passports control your coming and going from your own country. They are also required to enter another country. Without a valid passport (and to varying degrees, a valid passport with six months of duration left and a certain number of empty pages still in it) you aren’t going to be allowed into some countries. Contrary to much of the rhetoric in the US, just about every country in the world thinks very carefully about who to let into their country. You either meet the requirements for entry or you are denied entry. Not too long ago that might mean you show up and they decline to let you in the country and you have to find the next way out of the country at your own expense. These days, that permission is often granted or declined via electronic applications you submit in advance of your departure. These aren’t visas (more on that later). They’re an announcement that you intend to enter a country on such-and-such a date, stay at such-and-such a location, to such-and-such things (business, tourism, visiting friends & family, etc.), and then depart on such-and-such a date. You have to supply all this information. Then, based on what you submit and their background checks, you are granted the right – provisionally – to enter their country. That permission is always conditional – any immigration officer could deny you the right to enter regardless of whether or not you have the proper documentation in hand. Entering another country is a privilege, not a right, and it is a wise idea to keep this in mind.
Visas are another level of permission. Every country has a list. That list indicates which countries require visas and which don’t. Typically, countries on good relations with one another don’t require each others’ citizens to obtain visas to enter the country. They just need a valid passport and to fill out the electronic arrival card if necessary. You need to know whether your country of origin requires a visa or not to enter the desired country. If it does, and you don’t have a visa, you won’t be admitted. Again, who comes in and out of a country is really a big deal throughout the world.
There are different kinds of visas you could apply for, and knowing what kind of visa you need and are eligible is very important. Many countries offer basic tourist visas. These allow you to enter the country and stay for 30 days, give or take. Sometimes they can be renewed to extend your visit. Sometimes they can’t. Sometimes you have to apply for them and receive them in advance. Other times you can purchase one when you get off the plane in your destination country. The US State Department has the second-most definitive list of requirements for entering any particular country you might want to visit. But their list is always secondary to the list maintained by the country you want to visit. Again, doing your research is important.
For the last two years or so we’ve been blessed to be on a work visa. This is a one-year visa that allows us to live here, and to come and go from the country as often as we like. That’s hugely important for my particular work. Each year you have to renew the work visa and obtain a new one, linked to your passport. But renewing a work visa can only be done within a particular window. It certainly can’t be done *after* your current work visa expires, but it can only be done for a limited amount of time *before* it expires as well.
For me, this meant that my work visa would expire while we were in between travels to the US and to Germany this year. I couldn’t renew it before we left – that was outside the official window. But I also couldn’t just leave, let it expire, and then come back and start over. Some visas need to be properly concluded. So while I was gone, my work visa was officially terminated, which meant that when we returned, there wouldn’t be any questions about *why* we didn’t terminate the work visa properly, and which might jeopardize our being allowed to return.
It also means that when we returned, for the first time in two years we didn’t have a longer-term visa, and had to rely on Visas on Arrival, the basic 30-day tourist visa. We purchase these in the airport after deplaning and before going through immigration. All of which is good, but it does have the potential for challenges. Prior to getting my work visa, there started to be questions about why I was coming and going so often on tourist visas. There isn’t any official limit on how many times you can come and go with a new tourist visa, but certainly I had reached the point that raised eyebrows, culminating in a two-hour discussion with immigration officials.
I’m hoping to avoid that problem again. But I also have some specific things I *have* to be able to get to and from in the next few months. And, though I’ve only had my passport for two and a half years, I’m at the point where I need to get a new one before I run out of blank pages in the current one. And I’d rather get the new passport *before* I apply for a new work visa, since the visa is tied to the passport and I’d rather have it tied to the new one rather than having to carry both the new and old passport around just to get in and out of the country.
So prayers are appreciated. At this point the soonest I can safely surrender my passport to the US Embassy is mid-September. Otherwise, I run the risk of them not getting me a new passport in time to meet my obligations. So the plan is to apply for new passports in September, and then once we get those, apply for a new work visa linked to my new passport.
Pray the process goes smoothly. And perhaps as important, pray that I don’t run afoul of immigration officials before then. I don’t think I will, but you can never predict these things perfectly. Did I mention how seriously other countries take who comes in and out of their country? Yeah. I don’t blame them one bit. I want to be a good visitor. Please pray I’ll be able to, and our upcoming changes of passports and visas go smoothly! Thank you!
The Nelson Family Indonesia 