Residance Permit -Urgent! -Please advice!

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johnmaster
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Residance Permit -Urgent! -Please advice!

Post by johnmaster » Thu Oct 30, 2003 7:57 am

Hi everyone,

We have a problem here and really needs help/advice:

Me and my wife submitted our residance permit applications together with our son's application (6 mth old and his first permit) at Espoo police station in June

and to our surprise (well not really)...... they are still not ready yet..

to add to our misery, we are in the situation now where we have to travel back home in December...

the problem is our permit is not ready yet...and then when it's ready my son's application have to be sent to Immigration, which i think we have to wait atleast for another 1 month or so...

time is really running out..

my few last trips to the police station explaining the situation and to speed up the process is not helping at all... with the excuse that "we are trying our best and there are other applications to handle"

what i don't understand is i already have a positive reply from Labour Office 2 weeks ago and still the staff at the police station couldn't find the time to get that 'blady' sticker worked out...

is it possible to travel and enter back to finland with residance permit still in the application process?...

please, any help or advice... how shall i go about it...

john



Residance Permit -Urgent! -Please advice!

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Kemars
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Post by Kemars » Thu Oct 30, 2003 8:43 am

I think in a general sense ( and I am sure that others here would jump in if I am in correct) but explain your case once again to the correct people handling your resident / work permits. and the fact that you have to leave to travel back home (where is this at? which country are you currently of a resident of?) and that you are requesting from the police that your family's permits are in "PROCESS" in writing. You never know, it may help a bit.

Another route you could go is to ask your place of work to help out if they can. Since you mentioned that the LABOR Office gave a positive reply, ask if your HR dept/person can help "push" this through. :wink:

It's worth a try and hope it works out.
How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

johnmaster
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Post by johnmaster » Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:24 am

but explain your case once again to the correct people handling your resident / work permits.

and that you are requesting from the police that your family's permits are in "PROCESS" in writing.

i had this in my mind.... now to find the correct person is another problem as well... but anyhow i'm planning another trip to the police station either today or tommorow.... and this time i'm planning to hand in written request...

john

btw we are Malaysian nationals (Indian origin) and currently residing in Espoo.

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Hank W.
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Post by Hank W. » Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:32 am

The thing is, atleast the Estonians I'm more familiar with will go get their passport from the police station and visit back home for a holiday, but what I understand is they effectively get their process stopped and get back to the "bottom of the pile" and thus the practice is not something I'd recommend doing necessarily.

The police are notoriously clogged. They're still running with the same budget as 10 years ago there was one foreigner a month applying. One addition to the backlog is the thoroughness of the background check, as Finland is in the Schengen area and thus theres a whole new set of hoops to run through as well.
Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.

kultary
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Post by kultary » Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:40 am

I had a similar situation in Tampere (smaller town, fewer foreigners, shorter list). I had submitted my passport for my annual update and after it had been there for a couple of weeks, I found out that I had an urgent business trip that I couldn't miss.

I went and discussed it with the folks at the police station & they told me that they could temporarily give my passport back, but it would delay the processing. I told them that was an acceptable solution for me. They told me it would take a couple of hours to locate the paperwork & retrieve my passport.

When I came back, my residence permit had already been processed & I didn't need to re-submit the passport. So... either they had already put the sticker in and had it sitting until the promised due date or it only took them 2 hours to print the sticker and put it in.

Go and have an open discussion, find out what your options are & what the consequences are.

- Ryan

johnmaster
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Post by johnmaster » Thu Oct 30, 2003 9:53 am

hi kultary,

how about when you returning to Finland?... was you permit still valid?...
any problem at the immigration?

actually i did discuss with them but they didn't provide me some kind of concrete answer...

i was told we still can travel by taking back our passport, but might have problem entering back to Finland since we will not have valid residance permit at that time...

ours is actually already expired in September...


and the worst part is out transit from Malaysia will be at Frankfurt which i guess we have to go thru passport control..

john

kultary
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Post by kultary » Thu Oct 30, 2003 10:02 am

johnmaster wrote:how about when you returning to Finland?... was you permit still valid?...
any problem at the immigration?

ours is actually already expired in September...
Yeah.. that could be a problem, I had missed a deadline in a previous year & vowed never to do that again. I had applied plenty early, so my old permit was still valid.

I had a friend who forgot to renew his permit & travelled on business to London. When he left the country, the people at passport control politely invited him not to come back. He spent his trip at the Finnish embassy in London trying to get permission back. Once home, he got a nice letter from the police station asking him to come in and explain why he was living and working in Finland for over 6 months without a permit.

I wonder how that worked out for him... at least I saw him in Helsinki on Tuesday, so he didn't get deported.

- ryan

johnmaster
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Post by johnmaster » Thu Oct 30, 2003 10:20 am

just called UVI.....,


i was told that i had to have a letter from police before we leave Finland, stating that our application is still in process...

now, wondering how effective this letter will be at passport control in Frankfurt... (had some bitter experience with them before)...

and also wondering wheter i'll get such a letter in a first place from police..

john

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distantspaces
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Post by distantspaces » Thu Oct 30, 2003 12:09 pm

I got my residence permit renewed after my company wrote a letter to the Police - mentioning that I had to leave on a business trip. I got my permit within 2 weeks.

If I were you, I won't risk travelling outside the EU with a letter from Police like the one UVI has suggested. Not only you might have problems with Immigrations at Frankfurt, but the airline might just refuse to let you board the plane in the first place. If you don't have a valid visa to Europe, I don't think any airline would take the risk. And well, do you think the immigrations in your home country would let you leave if they see you don't have a visa for your destination?

In case you are working, ask your employer for help. If you are not working but have a strong personal reason for travelling abroad, then have you tried making a formal application to the police (a speed-up request)? Mention your circumstances and mention by when you want your permit to be ready. That is what they suggested to me, and it seemed to have worked quite well.

dusty_bin
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Post by dusty_bin » Thu Oct 30, 2003 12:58 pm

I understand that if you apply for your residence permit overseas, from the local Finnish embassy, the process takes about 10 days.

For those who are worreid that they go to the bottom of the pile if they get back their passport, this might be a worthwhile option.

dreamer
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Post by dreamer » Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:03 pm

johnmaster wrote:just called UVI.....,


i was told that i had to have a letter from police before we leave Finland, stating that our application is still in process...

now, wondering how effective this letter will be at passport control in Frankfurt... (had some bitter experience with them before)...

and also wondering wheter i'll get such a letter in a first place from police..

john
You need to have the paper AND the passport with you. (or at least this is how I understood it; there is also a different paper stating that they got your passport, but I really doubt that will get you through customs in Frankfurt for ex.)

I was in the same situation last summer and it went like this: I anticipated that the processing will not be over by the time I wanted to leave Finland for the holidays, so I asked them (in Espoo) if I can keep the passport while the processing is ongoing. They said ok, took a copy of it and said they will send a letter when everything is ready and I shoud bring the passport then. When I got the letter I went there with the passport, they put the sticker on right away.

Try to explain the situation again and ask if it's possible to "borrow" the passports and bring them back when you return. That should not take you back at the end of the queue. Also make sure that you are able to enter Finland with no problems when you return.
From what I understood there's not much point in trying to hurry them to give you the permit, they are pretty inflexible with that aspect.

>> edited to add: I didn't need the new permit in order to enter Finland, so in that aspect my experience is not much different then kultary's... :(
probably the only thing that was different was that taking the passport out did not result in any delay.
Last edited by dreamer on Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

dreamer
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Post by dreamer » Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:06 pm

dusty_bin wrote:I understand that if you apply for your residence permit overseas, from the local Finnish embassy, the process takes about 10 days.

For those who are worreid that they go to the bottom of the pile if they get back their passport, this might be a worthwhile option.
Depends which "seas" are we talking about; you know some seas are more equal then others :wink:

dusty_bin
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Post by dusty_bin » Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:43 pm

The only one that I know for sure is Estonia. I do not imagine that others woud NEED to be different. The purpose is to encourage applications before arrival in an environment less hectic than found in the Finnish police system.

johnmaster
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Post by johnmaster » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:37 pm

my employer talked to them in the afternoon.......they said they'll 'try' to get them ready next week... (not a promise).....

again the same excuse was given that "a lot applications to handle" and "under-resources"....

but guess what....

i just received a phone call from them and it's READY !!!!!!

i can collect them tommorow morning.... though my son's will take about 4 weeks (at the Immigration)...

atleast some relief....something better than nothing...

and now i'm wondering what those magical words (Finnish) that my boss uttered to them...

anyway thanks to all of you.....your replies do enlighten me and make me more wiser now..... more or less i know what to do/expect next time...

:lol: :lol: :lol:

john


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