Visa crisis!

Visa crisis!

Staying in New Zealand for longer than three months requires a visa, so we went through the process of applying. To apply for a NZ visa, we had to mail a form, along with some passport pictures, proof that we have the means to leave the country when our stay is up, and our passports. Luckily we avoided needing to include chest x-rays to prove that we don't have tuberculosis.


Mailing our passports was pretty nerve wracking. We filled out all the forms, I went to the post office, loaded everything into an envelope, double checked the contents, and sent it off with my fingers crossed. Only a week or so later, an envelope showed up.  We had our visas!  But wait...

I have a visa!  Wait... just one?

Unfortunately, only my passport and visa were in the envelope. Liz's passport was nowhere to be found. Several calls to the visa office later, we determined that they had no record of receiving Liz's passport.  

Maybe I somehow forgot to put the passport in the envelope? Nope. I still had the receipt from the package I mailed to the visa office:

7.7 oz

7.70 oz. We weighed my passport and all the other papers we sent with the original application, along with the same kind of envelope. It came out to 5.5 oz. The passport itself weighed... you guessed it... just about 2.2 oz. Liz's passport was definitely in the original envelope.

So, somewhere between the post office and the visa office, Liz's passport disappeared. The visa office has no record of receiving it, and swear up and down that there is no way they missed it or lost it.  

We have no solid proof that the passport was in the envelope - just a package weight isn't quite enough to start pointing fingers - so our only recourse was to declare Liz's old passport lost, have her apply for a new one, and then apply for the visa again.

$277 later - $140 for a new passport, $60 to expedite the passport, and $77 for the visa application - we've mailed Liz's new passport off to the visa office with a new application. Hopefully this time they don't lose it, or decide to reject her application for some reason - we should know in a week or so. Fingers crossed again!