Visa drama in Taipei - Part I

A last minute business trip to Taiwan popped up at work recently. Just as I was entertaining hopes of closing out another low-travel year, my chain of management decided otherwise. When I broke the news to my wife, I could predict her reactions fairly accurately. After years of holding a traveling job while being married earns you some smartness. Up first is the period of quiet immediately after the news is broken. Followed by the big bang – a fiery show of anger and annoyance at having to run a one-woman show while I'm away. Soon supplanted by resignation that this trip will happen too, like the many ones before. Or the ones in future. This time however, the individual doses were stronger than normal as this would be the first time she will be all by herself with our kid in the US where she hasn't yet started driving. And to add to the list of woes, the kid was not keeping well with a bout of fever, cold and cough resulting in sleepless nights and a very runny nose. Talk about a perfect storm. Oh, and the weather was forecast to be stormy with incessant rains. This was the one window of bad weather in the otherwise gorgeous Bay Area climate. 

In the melee leading up to my departure for the trip, I failed to take note of a critical aspect: my US visa had expired and had to be renewed before I could return home. Happily unaware, I took to the skies to try and be productive for my company half way across the globe.

Most countries make Indian passport holders part the seas while walking on coals before issuing a temporary visa valid for only the duration of the visit. I must mention that the blessed nation of Taiwan issues their visa without any questions to all valid US visa holders. That's right: so long as a current, valid US visa is stamped on your Indian passport, Taiwan throws open its doors. For 30 days. 

Upon arrival at the Taipei airport, I was thumbing through my passport to open the US visa page which needs to be verified to allow entry. To my horror, I realized that it had expired exactly two weeks before. The Taiwanese immigration official didn't notice this discrepancy and waved me in. As soon as I checked in to my hotel, I shot off an innocuous email to the attorneys in CA whether I needed a visa to re-enter the US with nothing more than hope that something in the background had happened unbeknownst to me that would magically let me in. A curt email confirmed my fears: I had to get my visa renewed before I could return home. If this was a typical Indian movie, this would be the moment when the room starts spinning slowly as I barely manage to clutch the edge of the table to steady myself while loud music, mostly violins, plays in the background. Yeah, it was that bad. It felt as if I was living through a bad nightmare.

Folks that have gone through the grind will appreciate how difficult it can be to get an American visa stamped on your passport. Be it getting the photograph taken to specification or completing the applications or arranging the supporting documents, it requires a lot of preparation and can be an arduous task on a good day, even in your own city with the assistance of your travel desk. And here I was, an Indian, sitting in Taiwan by myself trying to get an American visa stamped. This was disastrous on a global level. 

My fears were many and the odds were firmly stacked against me. Will there be an appointment slot available within a reasonable time? Will they accept my application or ask me to go to India (my home country) or Singapore (where my previous visa was issued)? Will there be additional administrative processing involved that could potentially leave me stranded in Taiwan or Singapore or India for weeks? If so, I would then have to go to India to even apply as my Taiwanese visa would run out in a few days’ time. Will I be able to return before New Year’s? Will my son recognize me when I meet him again? The taxi ride to work was spent battling all these questions. Oh and did I mention that my passport was completely out of pages except for one empty side right behind another visa? Slowly but steadily, the gravity of the situation sunk in.

At the office, I informed my manager, who was also traveling with me, about the hole that I found myself in. The one dialog that would capture the essence of his response: மண்ணடி பின்னாடி. முதல்ல visa-வை கவனி.

I rolled up my sleeves and got down to tackle the task at hand. I looked up the next available visa appointment. Luckily for me, a slot was available at 7:45am the very next day. Woot! I had nailed down one variable. Now I had a deadline in sight to get all the prep work done by. I then completed the application form and shot off emails to various people to send me the supporting documents. As it was still evening back in California, the responses started trickling in right away. The attorneys were going to send me the visa petition and an assortment of other required documents, the HR group my employment verification details and support letters.

I then sat down to make that all important call back home to my wife and break the good news to her. And also ask for copies of my educational certificates and some more obscure documents. If I had it my way, I would have got on the phone not before a couple of shots of Grey Goose. But hey, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Alcohol or not. Needless to say, the call went longer than expected. Much longer. Although I didn’t expect to exchange sweet nothings with my wife, her reactions traced a wide arc, touching upon qualities that an education had failed to instill in me to scrutinizing my capabilities to run a family or even be gainfully employed for that matter. I weathered the storm rather admirably (doodling on the hotel notepad) and when she finally let me do it, I read out the list of documents that I wanted sent. A colleague of mine living nearby in the Bay Area graciously agreed to pick up the documents from her and email me a soft copy. With that aspect also taken care of, I walked out into the driving rains to finally meet my beloved customers: the original purpose of my trip.

That evening, I got my picture taken at a studio. A first for me in Taiwan. The studio didn't have dirty combs, smelly half coats, forlorn ties or even a dented tin of Cuticura of Jurassic vintage – standard issue items in any Chennai studio. As a result, I could hardly identify myself in the picture. But it had a white background and was two inches square and that is all that matters.

Once back in my hotel room I had no inclination to have dinner: food was the last thing on my racing mind.  I grabbed an apple, got online and started monitoring the incoming documents.  The attorneys sent me what they said they would. My colleague sent me the copies. The HR folks, as usual, were the last ones to turn in their homework. At 4 AM, with all documents received and sleep refusing to grace my eyelids, I walked down to the hotel’s business center and started putting together my visa application package. I decided to pack in a whole bunch of documents that were not required including my travel itinerary. More is better when it comes to visa applications. By 5:30 AM, I was showered, dressed up in a dandy suit –can’t skimp on any niceties with so much at stake - and waiting for the cab to take me and a very pregnant manila folder to Taipei. 

Did the slowelectron get the visa stamped? Did he fly back home in time for the holidays? Watch this space for the final part.