The purrs and grrrss of a wandering and wondering Kat: Illegal immigrant???

The purrs and grrrss of a wandering and wondering Kat

Monday, January 28, 2008

Illegal immigrant???

I am officially staying illegally in this country (name of country withheld for obvious reasons!). Perhaps I should not be publishing that fact or risk being caught and jailed here. In my defense, I actually have a permanent residence permit here. And to top it off, I have an emergency travel certificate issued by the Consulate General of Malaysia in this country. So i guess technically speaking, I am probably not THAT illegal.

Anyway, I sent my passport back in KL to get a VISA done for me, for my other trip scheduled for 10th Feb. The idea was for that VISA to be ready, well in time before me leaving for KL on the 7th Feb and I will get someone to take that passport back to me. Unfortunately there has been some delays with my VISA in KL, and it is likely that my VISA will only be ready on the 10th itself. Which means I may have problems to get to KL in the first place.

Here is where, in most countries the emergency certificate would come in handy. One could use that and is a legally accepted and valid travel document to be used in emergency cases (which mine is). However, it is not so here. For some reason it is not accepted. I can perhaps understand if they do not allow me to use that to ENTER the country, but here I am trying to LEAVE the country. Yet they will not allow me. In most other countries where the government is eager to deport any illegal immigrants, including those visitors who have overstayed their allowed duration, here is quite the opposite. Even with a valid visa, if you have overstayed your duration, you are NOT allowed to leave, instead you must have a valid visa to leave the country. I find that weird. In that situation, one could probably not have an extended visa, for example end of contract period.. Would it not be better for them to leave the country than stay illegally and possibly unemployed??

Oh well, that is the scenario here. In the mean time, I am praying hard that my VISA will be ready well before the 10th of Feb whist at the same time looking around very hard to find anyone who is travelling to this city and willing to bring my passport back here. I feel like I'm almost fighting a losing battle here, considering its that time of year where people are leaving to go back to KL for the holidays and not the other way around...

But I am still praying and hoping that it will somehow miraculously work out for me. That I will get to go to KL when i want and on to my onward journey later...

Labels: Wandering and Travelling

scratched by Scatty-Kat @ 2:38 PM

1 Comments:

At February 1, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Anonymous said…

get her out of the country