Just had the most ridonkulous experience getting D passes for my wife & kids. Everyone has told me this is an easy process that should only have taken at max, 7 days but usually only 2-3 days.. but 4 weeks later, we are only just at the end of this process! In the meantime, my daughter has been unable to attend school (even though we have paid her full term at Stamford International America School) so I am literally paying a good deal over $S100 a day for nothing!
In brief, here is what happened..
Some months ago my company asked our local Singapore law firm whether they could assist me with my visa applications. They said sure, they do this all the time for many of their other clients. So the lawyer called me & told me what needed to be done.. he sent me all the forms & told me what details I needed to produce. For my own Employment Pass, the whole procedure took around 4 weeks before approval. I didn't think much of it at the time as people were saying it could take anywhere between 1-5 weeks. Since then, many of my expat friends have told me that it took no more than 1-2 weeks to get their employment passes using a local visa agency.
Anyway, after I got my E Pass, I then proceeded to apply for my wife & kids D passes. I did this about 2 weeks before I left Australia. Apart from the fact that the law firm submitted the forms 3 days after they received them, for which they gave no real explanation other than "we were busy", I didn't think too much of it believing the passes would be approved when we arrived in SG.
When we did arrive, I receive an email from my HR Dept saying that MOM sent the applications back because we had used the wrong forms Argh?!! What?? I couldn't believe it.. the law firm had sent us the wrong forms.. so just under 2 weeks wasted I asked the law firm what they were going to do & what was the fastest way we could get the application done. They told me they would contact MOM & see how to expedite. A day later they came back saying that they needed to apply for a PIN for EPOL & we needed to sign a letter allowing them to do this!! They said the PIN would take a few days to receive after which they would submit online & at the earliest MOM would take 7 days to revert. What??? You don't have a PIN already?? But you said you did this all the time, what are you actually doing??
Essentially it came out that the law firm was adding absolutely no value whatsoever apart from "checking" the forms that we signed. Bl**dy use that was since they sent us the wrong forms in the first place. And then all they were doing were submitting the forms manually themselves!! Arrghhhh!! Absolutely couldn't believe it.. it was nearly 2 weeks since we arrived which meant my daughter was out of school for those whole 2 weeks.
After asking the law firm how they represented their capabilities to our company, surprise surprise, the lawyer calls & advises that they would "bow out", that I could use a local agency & they wouldn't charge my company for the D pass application! Basically they were called out & didn't want to lose our company as a client. Great.. no use for me personally as we had wasted so much time & I was back at square one.
I contacted a local Visa agency & they said they could have approval in 2 days, 7 at the very worst. Their charges were 1/5th of what the law firm were going to charge me. So we decided to go with them.
But the craziness doesn't stop there.. we send scans of all our passports, birth certs for kids & marriage cert for wife to the agency. They call us & say, oh, we noticed that your wife's name on her marriage certificate is different from her passport. I'm thinking "derr" of course, as when she got married that was her maiden name! All Australian marriage certificates are like that. But the agent says, MOM will reject it, instead they want us to go to the Australian Embassy to get a letter that states that my wife is the same person on the marriage certificate. I'm like what???! I call other expat Aussie friends & ask them & they said that they never heard of this. I call the agent & they said, yes MOM changed their procedures several months ago & this is what is now needed. They said the embassy should give us a letter & that this should be pretty quick.
By this time I'm just desperate to get everything sorted, so I take the family & we go to the Embassy. We get there & ask for the letter.. the people at the embassy are shocked.. they've never ever been asked for this before.. they confirm all Australian marriage certs are like that! I say I'm shocked because if MOM changed their procedures months ago, am sure thousands of Aussies have come to Singapore since then & surely at least 1 person has asked for this if not 100's!! I call the agency & tell them what the embassy say, but they insist we need it! So we get a Stat dec done & stamped (which really isn't the embassy confirming anything but we this is a lengthy topic in itself) & send to the agent.
We think everything is fine until I get a call saying that my passport & my daughter's birth certs are different!! Basically on my recent passport I chose to also include my Chinese name (I'm Asian Australian) but in the past didn't use it for other documents.. in Australia this is optional. So to cut a long story a little shorter, off I march to the embassy again!!!!
Other smaller complexities & annoyances also involved in this long & ridonkulous experience but I have outlined the major things that happened.
Anyway, still haven't got the passes approved but the agent believes should be done by mid this week at the latest..
Ridonkulous huh??!!
