"List previous addresses of the places where you have lived for 12 months or more, either continuously or cumulatively, during the last 10 years (including Australia). You must account for every year."
So what do you do about the years when you lived three months here, six months there, five months somewhere else...?
Note: the addresses are independently verifiable, since for the ones in Australia we had to officially register our addresses with Immigration, and for the moves involving multiple countries, these had to be listed elsewhere on the form. Otherwise I'd just fudge it and pick one of the multiple addresses and say I lived there for the whole time.
(Incidentally, the space on the form under this question provides room for a maximum of four addresses. I need to give between seven and twelve, depending on whether I choose to disregard the first half or the second half of the instruction.)
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Contradictory visa form instruction of the day
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2 Comments:
You've got to love forms that don't know what they're talking about. Ever get the feeling that they're usually completed two minutes before a deadline..."Quick, what other questions can we ask them.."
When I wanted permanent residency here, the forms were a nightmare. There was a whole series of questions about my husband's job and how he was going to support me and so on, and we do things the other way around. I have the paying job. There was absolultely nothing about what I did. Apparently women are not supposed to be breadwinners in Japan.
We just attached a letter explaining why that part of the form didn't work for us. The guy was a bit funny about it at first, but then The Man whipped out a book he'd translated, and the guy goggled and said, "YOU wrote this? This is your name?" and went totally ga-ga, as if he'd just met someone famous. He went so pink with excitement his acne stood up and saluted. Then The Man explained how much he'd been paid for it (enough to feed a family of sparrows for six months), but it made no difference. He was FAMOUS! He had his name on a BOOK! It was an astonishing reaction.
Everything went through like a dream. He didn't even bat an eyelid at the bit where I was supposed to write the names, occupations, AND INCOME of all my family members in NZ and I'd left it blank with a covering note that they didn't talk to me so I didn't know. No problem! I was married to a man who had written a BOOK!
(Apparently they don't ask that family question anymore.)
Talk to me! (You know you want to!)