Someone told me you could file for "permanent resident status" in the u s at immigration. I just called them and they said no only in manila. They only will do visa's. Also they said you "can not" renew your permanent resident acr-i card in the states.
NOR it seems in any other country! Contrary, to the mandate of the Philippine Embassy Remit BUT this BOI buffoon of a Commissioner, seems to make up his own Rules. Then adds ridiculous requirements that, are not met, by the RP Government departments. Madrid Embassy will not Authenticate any Police clearance either, someone please, tell me, where do we go next???
Jack, you have a UK Passport, yes? That is your HOME country, no matter that you haven't lived there in eons. That is where the police clearance would need to come from. Some countries require police clearances from any country of residence for XX years back. Phils law just states home country. Even though you haven't lived in the UK for a long time, a trip to your local police station(in the UK...a relative can do this for you) and a fee will get you a piece of paper that says you are very boring and they have never had to deal with you....all in quite polite legalese (of course!) You can get the application form online, print it, mail it to them and they will send it back in about two weeks. Here is the website you need. (And anyone else from the U.K.) http://www.acro.police.uk/police_certificates.aspx Another unfortunate development...I'm reading on different forums that different BOI offices are interpreting "notarized" differently. Some offices accept a standard notarization and some office are interpreting it as "apostille ized". This is causing some problems as you can imagine. Best to check with the BOI office that you will use to find the differences.
For those Americans that might wish to know the +/- of 13a(spouse) vs. 9(tourist) visas, I have done a bit of number crunching for the cost of both. The scenario I used was my own, as in I have no one in the states to help me doing any running around and I have no relatives to stay with while I do my own running around, so airfare, hotels, and meals are all included. Without going into a great mathematical explanation, I found I can keep pumping money into a tourist visa year after year for 14 years for the same cost as all the crap I'd have to do to get a 13a. This includes trips in and out of the country every 16 months. The only benefit to the 13a that I can see is that you won't have to keep renewing every 2 - 6 months as with a tourist visa. This of course is using today's prices and not accounting for increases or inflation, so maybe more realistic is 10 years.
One issue I wrestled with about getting the police clearance is that if I do it by mail, which can be done, then I would have to get the fingerprints in the Phils, complete the application and mail it in with payment. The FBI would send me the clearance, then I would have to mail that clearance to the State Dept to get an apostille and they would mail it back to me, then I would have to mail it to the Phil Consulate that covers the area that I got the clearance and they would have to mail it back to me....so, thats 6 international mailings with documents that cannot be copied and must be originals...can anyone calculate the odds of the letters being damaged or lost in transit? How many times would I have to start this process over before it was all successfully completed? O-|
Going Underground!! I Am beginning to think that coming OFF the Radar and going Underground may, be a good thing, Sod the cost and heartache, of all this Crap, I have enough time on this passport to live till I am 73, Why should I bother with all this. Since 2009 my presence has never been questioned by any authority. I have never gone looking for them, WHY? therefore, should they come, looking for me. at 66 , I am not going to live for ever and if they want me, I have to ask WHY? More importantly, could they ever find me, They can't even find a runaway car or Motorcycle. You guessed it, I am mad not in the head, just
I did a UK police clearance a couple of years ago for an SRRV. For a UK certificate you download and fill in the form as directed on the website. In UK there are several companies who will do the 'Apostille' process (google 'apostille uk') and then courier the finished document to you. When you send the form to the police clearance department, specify the address of the company you want to handle the Apostille. I did it from Oman, where I work, and the whole process cost me about GBP350 and took 3 weeks.
