So, after the events that lead to last week’s post, thing have changed.

On our end, we kept trying to find ways to get My wife’s paperwork sped up from the Philippine side. However, due to the typhoons (plural) that hit the country recently, certain government offices were flooded, and closed. (or the area nearby was inaccessible, I’m not sure). So getting a rushed paper copy of the paperwork was quoted as 4~6 weeks to arrive.

We looked into an E-Apostille. And ordered one. 2 problems came up from that. Apparently China doesn’t accept E-Apostilles, which sucks. The other problem is the method in which an E-Apostille is made. One Government office prints up our paperwork, authenticates it and then MAILS the papers to the Apostille. The Apostille Office then has to scan it, and create the digital apostle form. The Apostille Office doesn’t trust digital copies sent from the government? And then this falls into the whole Manila is flooded problem.

The HR representative from my company had been working on ways to extend my wife’s visa. They were handling this from the China side. She was more successful. We discovered that there is a specialty Immigration office on the far side of the city. This office deals with non standard applications, or problem solving. My wife had an interview with them yesterday. They agreed to extend her current visa 30 days.

So now we have 30 days to finish getting the paperwork.

This morning, My son received our marriage certificate from the government. But it was not Apostilled. And the next available appointment to get an Apostille was end of August. We called the government (again) this morning. They helped us order an Apostilled Marriage Certificate without an appointment. It should be available this week.

So at this point, we seem to be on the way to finally getting my wife a spousal visa. She will finally be legally recognized as family in China, after 19 years.