Getting a Student Visa

I had to try to go and get my student visa the other day. It wasn’t fun. I went two weeks ago to initiate the whole thing, and then returned the other day to try to finish it off. Between these times I got an email from my uni saying that the immigration department had written to me and I needed to collect a letter. The letter was basically saying that the dates of my period of study were incorrect, so I needed to have an official letter from the Uni stating the correction. But I didn’t know it said that because I couldn’t understand it and my uni didn’t explain it.

So I headed to the immigration department, and waited in the first line for about fifteen minutes, and presented my documents, and the guy at the counter said something I didn’t understand and pointed in some direction, and wrote something on my papers which I also didn’t understand. I walked in the direction of his finger, and ended up at another desk. I showed my documents, and the people behind the desk looked confused, and asked if I’d been to the other desk and I said yes, and they looked at the documents again, and I thought they said, ‘this is different, remain waiting here’.

So I remained waiting for about fifteen minutes, and then one of them came out from the desk and asked if was waiting for something… Hmmm. Yeah, my visa? No – wrong desk, go to the next building. So I went to the next building, and tried to show my things to someone, but they said go to another line, so then I went to the other line and they said, no you need to go to another line, so I went to the other line, and they said, no you need to go back to the first line I stood in. So then with Brennan’s help we asked someone who looked like they had a skerrick of an idea how the stupid place worked, and he confirmed I had to go to the first line again.

So I went to the first line again, and the woman let me know that the dates were wrong and I needed a letter showing the correction. So I moved the document that was on top to reveal the document underneath showing the correction, and she said, hmmmm, yes but it needs to be legalized. So I stood there looking confused for about 3 minutes, and she eventually said, well maybe if it’s signed by the same person as the original it doesn’t have to be legalized. It was, so I didn’t have to go to another part of town, and wait two more days to get a stupid letter legalized by some stupid department that legalizes things.

But I did have to go and stand in another line. Which I did, and got some other bit of paper that showed that something had been corrected, I think, but the guy behind the counter didn’t tell me that, and all he actually said to me was ‘you’re done here’ in English. Then I went back to the second line of the day to ask if I needed to wait in the first line of the day again – the answer was, of course, yes - and so I headed to the first line of the day, waited 15 minutes, to be told that the system was down and I’d have to wait. So I waited for 10 more minutes, and when the system came back up they asked me what the guy in the line in the other room had told me, and I said that he had said ‘You’re done here’ in English, and they asked what that means and I couldn’t really explain, because ‘you’re done here’ is as ambiguous in English as it is in Spanish, so he looked confused, and I looked confused, and I asked if I have my visa yet, and he said no, and that I should return next week.

Here is a graphical representation of the process:



Or for those of you who associate better with audio, imagine going to the RTA during lunchtime, with this on your mp3 player, on loop, at an uncomfortably loud level, but so that you can still just hear what people are saying, but you only understand 50% of it, and when your number is called, you arrive at the counter where the person is rude to you, let alone smiles at you, and tells you to go next door to another building to take another number: