Day 241 - Getting Out Of Town

Leaving Barbados and getting to Moldova was my most complicated transfer.

Image of U.S. passport by origami_potato,
via Flickr.com

First, I had to get the immigrant visa petitions for Alex and our son filed so they could arrive in the U.S. as legal immigrants. This wouldn't have been strictly necessary since Alex and I expected to leave the U.S. less than two months later and our son could have attended school on a student visa, but we wanted Alex to be naturalized so that we both would travel to Moldova on American diplomatic passports. That would also make it easier for Alex to get a visa to travel to Moldova and to get work there.

Normally an immigrant must live in the United States for five years before being eligible to apply for citizenship. But there are expedited procedures for family members of U.S. government employees who are ordered to leave the U.S. within that five-year window.

There are many documentary requirements for an immigrant visa petition, including getting a police clearance from any areas the recipient of the petition, i.e., Alex, had lived for at least six months after the age of 18. In Alex's case, that meant something not very common since for the previous year he had lived four days a week in St. Lucia and three days a week in Barbados. He had to get police clearances from both countries for the same period of time.

I had my own challenges getting orders because the majority of the people being sent to the newly independent states were already in Washington so the technicians writing up their orders could follow standard procedures. Those in Washington going to Moldova didn't need orders including five days of consultation; they were already in Washington where they could consult with all the offices in Washington with an interest in Moldova. In my case, however, that extension the year before required that I take home leave, a once-every-two-year benefit, the summer before. Consultation days are only included on orders that include home leave. The standard procedures in my case meant my orders coming just one year after I had taken my home leave would be for a direct transfer, like a Monopoly Go directly to jail, do not pass GO card. But it wasn't possible to travel directly to Moldova from Barbados. Since Moldova had only existed a few months, there was no diplomatic presence in Barbados for me to get a visa. There also was no information on how to get to Moldova from ANYWHERE at that point. I kept explaining to my technician that my orders must include a stop in Washington. I needed consultation days. I needed a visa. I needed travel arrangements.

Then I made a serious mistake: I mentioned my husband's naturalization as a reason to be in Washington.  We already had an appointment for September 3 and the next opportunity wouldn't be until October, long after we were expected to be in Moldova. I should have learned from all my interviews with Iranian visa applicants that mentioning too many reasons just meant I would say something the technicians would be able to use to disregard my request because they were personal reasons and for my convenience, not official and for the government's benefit. It took intervention from someone from the executive office for the regional bureau responsible for Barbados to make it clear that the naturalization was incidental, not the reason for the travel to Washington, because once I had mentioned something personal, the technician wouldn't listen to anything else from me.

Image of new citizen by Aviad T,
via Flickr.com

Eventually the orders came, we planned our travel to get us to Moorhead to get our son into high school for his final year before college. We traveled to Washington for my days of consultation, for Alex's naturalization, for Alex to get his tourist and diplomatic passports, for us to get travel arranged to get to Moldova, for us to apply for our Russian visa because Moldova didn't yet have the infrastructure to issue their own visas, and then to wait. We waited, and waited. My five days of consultation came to an end and there was no estimate for when the visas would be ready. Saturday was the only day Air Moldova flew into Moldova, from Frankfurt, so we knew that nothing would make it possible for us to travel for at least seven more days. I didn't relish the thought of getting my assignment technician to extend the number of consultation days, but without an extension, we would have to pay for the hotel room while we waited. So we flew to England to spend time with Alex's family while we waited.

At the end of the first week in England, our passports with visas had not yet arrived, so we had another week to wait. I called the embassy in Moldova to let them know we would be delayed because we didn't have the visas yet. That is when we learned that Moldova didn't require us to have any visa, let alone a Russian visa. But we also didn't have our diplomatic passports, so we couldn't continue our travels until the next week anyway.

By the following Saturday, we had our passports, we traveled to Frankfurt, and we finally made our way to Moldova.