Keep a second passport.
[Gosh, dual nationality can be useful! I believe I am eligible, in theory, for an Irish and a Brazilian passport. In theory. Alas, I know very little about my forebears, and have no supporting documentation to verify the qualifying grandparent.]
3 comments:
Remember that I haven't actually used the second passport yet, so we'll see how it goes -- in theory, there shouldn't be any problem, though in practice I can see the visa people in Hong Kong wondering exactly how I got into the territory with a passport that was issued in Beijing and had no stamps or visas in it.
Yes, well, good luck with that one.
Have you been over to Froogville today? I was wondering if you could help out with a ponder about one of the quirks of Chinese culture - is "You must have been (very) attractive when you were young(er)" a standard Chinese phrase, an accepted form of compliment. I hear it so often, I assume it must be. But if so, why - what is the thinking behind this?
It's only a "qualifying grandparent" issue with the Irish one - father's father. I believe that's good enough (to get me into the national football team!), but I know next-to-bugger-all about the man and certainly don't have his birth certificate.
My Mum was born in Brazil, but again no birth certificate. We were told that their main public records office burned down some time in the 1950s, so there's no proof of anyone's birth in the country prior to that. It caused us huge grief in trying to get her a British passport. Yep, despite having been a British resident and British taxpayer and wife of a British husband for decades, she still couldn't get a passport because of the lack of a birth certificate. Only after our MP intervened with the Foreign Office were we able to get her a temporary passport for a single, brief European holiday.
What?? They thought she was a flight risk???? It baffles the comprehension. I think it was round about the age of 10, because of this incident, that I began to hate governments and bureaucracies.
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