We sent our visa applications (and passports and tons of other documents and paperwork) to the South African Consulate a little over 2 weeks ago. It's only supposed to take 8-10 days for them to issue the visas.
I just received a call from the consulate saying they only received part of Lincoln's application and no others (everything we sent was in 1 envelope). This isn't very surprising to us, the last time we applied they lost all of Madison's paperwork including her passport (which they eventually found). We are just up against a deadline - we fly to South Africa on Jan 22nd and our tickets are non-refundable.
More troublesome is that they are now requiring an FBI background check which takes 8-10 weeks to process. We leave in 4 weeks.
When we got our visas before the FBI was not allowing individuals to request their own records and the consulate accepted a background check from our state. Since then the FBI has started allowing individuals to get their record, but since the state background check was accepted by the consulate last time, we didn't even think to check with the FBI.
I've already checked - the FBI won't expedite. And after we get the FBI records, we still need to submit them to the consulate and then they need to process our visas, which takes 8-10 days.
So, please pray that they find the 5 missing applications and that somehow we can get our FBI background checks immediately and that the consulate will issue our visas in time.
Oh mercy.
ReplyDeleteWill pray.
Wow! We are praying!! We didn't need to get the FBI background check- only fingerprints and a state police check... but they did tell us that every consulate has its own rules. We will be praying for immediate results- we want you here!!!
ReplyDeleteabby :O)