It's been a long time since I have sat down to type on here. I promised this
blog last week but instead I worked on that Friday and then this Friday was
Matariki so no 'child-free day' but I've managed to find some time in the
slightly warm mid-Winter sun to write the story of the passport.
In the process
of international adoption every country adopting from and to is different. If
you adopt from India to the USA you need to get an Indian passport, while with
your child, in order to leave the country. Not so in New Zealand. I needed the
adoption papers, a current passport for New Zealand, an exit permit and
citizenship for NZ in order to get back home (The USA need most of the other
things as well). As it was during Covid everyone entering New Zealand needed
citizenship making this a new criteria. There were two types of citizenship I
could apply for 'Citizenship by Descent' and 'Citizenship by Grant'. I applied
for Citizenship by Descent as that was the quickest and easiest to get during
Pandemic times and I knew I could change it later. The children's home didn't
realise that I didn't need an Indian passport to exit the country with my
daughter. So, the children's home applied for and were granted an Indian
passport for her. This was no big deal at the time and we (myself and the NZ
adoption agency) just went with it. Fast forward to leaving India at Delhi
airport. The lady at the desk was insisting I needed to use my daughter's Indian
passport in order to leave the country. There were several airport personnel
standing behind the desk and many many other passengers staring at is. I had all
our luggage, I was wearing a mask in extreme heat and I had my daughter with me
who barely knew me. Where on earth did I pack her Indian Passport? Praying
profusely I opened my luggage to check and relief washed over me as I saw the
passport sitting neatly on top of all of my belongings. I handed the passport
over expecting the staring and raised voices to cease. Instead a lady said
'follow me' and we were marched with our luggage through the airport to stand
outside a little room while the lady went inside with the passport. A while
later she came back out and said 'come'. We followed her again back to our
starting point and had our luggage checked in and the Indian passport stamped
and handed back to us. Fast forward almost a year and I had started the process
of cancelling my daughter's citizenship in India as you can not be a dual
citizen. I had posted off her Indian passport and filled many forms out online.
I was quite nervous about doing this as her Indian passport is part of her story
and I didn't want her to lose that. There was reason to be nervous. I heared
back from the High Commision of India (HCI) a few weeks later saying that I need
to send in more documents etc. I did this and they had all of what they needed
at the beginning of May 2023. Now it was just a time to wait as it said on the
HCI website that it would take approximately 90 days to process. 90 days passed
by and I went online to check how it was going. It said 'still in process'. I
did this over several weeks and finally decided to email the HCI. Over the next
weeks and months I email HCI many many MANY times. Each time I am told it is
still in process. I tried calling their phone number, which I had been told no
one answers, 51 times in one day... no one answers. Over 350 days had passed
since sending the final lot of documents that were needed. I'm was really
worried they had lost the passport and I was at the point of threatning to get
my pretend lawyer involved. Fast forward to 9 May 2024. I was at another school,
on a professional development day, and I noticed a missed call on my phone which
said 'Maybe: Passport Section, HCI. I was shocked. I turned to my colleague and
told them that if it rings again I would need to answer. Sure enough a few
minutes later my phone rang and I ran outside to take it. The lady on the end of
the line wanted to know if I was my daughter. I explained that I am her mum. She
was very brisk and direct telling me that she had my daughter's passport with
her. I took a sigh of relief; they hadn't lost it. She carried on to tell me
that I obtained my daughter's citizenship in NZ, dated November 2021, before I
applied for her Indian passport, I was informed 2022 sometime. This is illegal.
I would be fined a lot of money. It is a criminal conviction. ummmmm... relief
has disappeared. I desperately tried to explain that I wasn't even the person
who applied for the passport. But she wasn't interested. She demanded that I
email her as soon as possible to state in detail as to why this had happened. I
walked back in to the PD stuned and tried to explain what has just happened to
my colleagues. They can't believe it. That afternoon I sent an email to the HCI
explaining how the Indian passport came to be. I recieved an email back a few
days later asking for proof of her citizenship which I thought was weird because
they already had that. I sent it again via email and then got another reply
stating that they needed evidence of when I got the physcial citizenship and
whether that was before or after the passport was applied for. They said that it
may have been the package it was delivered in the post! Well I definitely didn't
keep that! By this stage I had contacted the NZ adoption agency and they were
considering ringing the Consulate of India. I searched through my emails and
found one dated the middle of February 2022 which said that my daughter's NZ
passport and citizenship were now both ready and would be sent soon. I now
needed to find evidence of when the Indian passport was created. I searched my
emails again and found one on the 28th January saying that the Indian passport
had been applied for and would be ready in a few days. I knew I had the evidence
I needed. I took a screenshot of the first email and sent it to the HCI. I was
so relieved that as I pressed send I said, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it."
Not really my finest moment. I had a reply from HCI the next day saying
'recieved'. That was it. So I waited, and waited and then I started emailing
again. And nobody replied. Three weeks after sending the evidence they needed I
emailed them requesting information by the end of the week. In this email I also
informed them of some information I had learned from the NZ adoption agency in
this crazy process - Citizenship by Descent is backdated to when the adoption
order is signed which was in November of 2021. I hadn't applied for citizenship
in November as was originally thought. I received an email on the Friday saying
that the passport would be in the post that day. I then got a call from the HCI
to tell me that they had missed the post for that day so they would send it on
Monday, which would actually be Tuesday as it was King's birthday weekend. I
knew that it wasn't over until I had the passport in my hand. It sat at
Christchurch Airport for a week, just watching the planes fly by. Once I had the
passport in my hand I sent an email to HCI saying that I wasn't impressed with
their service, especially of being accused of illegal activty and being
threatened to be fined large sums of money and acquire a criminal conviction.
They asked for evidence of this email communication. I told them it wasn't by
email but if they recorded their phone conversations they could look for one on
9th May at 2:13pm. I knew that they wouldn't record them but I wanted them to
know that I was serious. It's okay to make a mistake. But I wanted to make sure
that this didn't happen to anyone else. The NZ adoption agency now tell everyone
to apply for citizenship by grant to hopefully prevent this from happening
again. We have a cancelled Indian Passport. We have proof of cancelled
citizenship. I don't have a criminal conviction. Boy have I aged in the process.
It reminded me of... the adoption process!
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