One Barrier Down for Our Return Home...

Got some good news this week. In case you didn't know/don't remember, my wife, daughter, and I normally live in China, but we've been stuck in the U.S. since January thanks to the pandemic. We were going to go back in early March, but China blocked entrance to foreigners around the same time.

Well, this week, they've announced that they will allow foreign passport holders who already have residence permits to return. Even if their permits expired after March (mine expired in June), they can go to their nearest Chinese consulate and get a new one without having to start the visa process all over. That's very good news for me, because the visa process is a pain, especially to get a work visa like mine.

Unfortunately, this is but one obstacle of many. Even though the country is open for us to return, we still need to go all the way to Chicago to renew my visa/residence permit, as well as get a special travel permit for my daughter (due to her sort of having dual nationalities). If you follow the national news, you probably know that Chicago is not the safest of places these days. And we're pretty sure the consulate's visa office is still closed thanks to the lockdown, which probably won't end until after the election for political reasons.

And on top of that, my wife's visa extension is taking a lot longer than expected, so she can't really travel until that's sorted out.

So the light at the end of the tunnel is a teensy bit closer, but the road is still long.

Oh man, what an uphill battle. So sorry you guys are having to deal with all of that. Hang in there and please let us know if we can be praying for anything specific!

Is Chicago the closest one? There are 5 others you could try. Hope you get things worked out.

jorowi wrote:Is Chicago the closest one? There are 5 others you could try. Hope you get things worked out.

Chicago is our district's consulate. We tried going through the embassy in D.C., but they blew us off. And the one in Houston has been closed for national security reasons or something.

Some good news today: We actually got a hold of a real person at the Chicago consulate's visa office. Even though they're still closed, the guy did give us some information as to what we'll need to get our daughter back into the country. The bad news is that it's even more complicated a process than we'd expected. The only foreigners allowed back in right now are those who already have residence permits. Since our daughter was born there, we never needed to get her a visa of any kind unless we felt like formally renouncing her citizenship there. So we need to get her an invitation letter from the local government, and my school's visa handler says that it might be difficult. There's an issue of taxes that could muddle things up, as I've never been told when, how, or if I need to pay taxes there, and I don't know if my company has been paying them for me properly or not. They don't make that kind of thing easy on expats.