We’re residents!

Woah, that was a close one! We got our sedulas with days to spare! That’s not to say we were going to get deported but if we didn’t get them this week but the process was about to get far more annoying. I don’t want to muddy up the original post with our saga so here it is.

To apply for your sedula you need the letter from immigration stating you’ve been approved to live on Bonaire. This letter usually comes within 4-6 weeks of applying. When ours hadn’t come in 12 weeks we started to worry and went down to IND to check on it as our marriage certificate was getting close to timing out.

We took a number, sat for almost 3 hours, and were told it’s “in process.” We already knew that 🙂 but the agent couldn’t tell us anything more about where in the process we were. She said we could submit a letter asking them to expedite it citing our marriage certificate issue date. “Can we email the letter?” Of course not! Another 3 hour visit to hand over the letter. Weeks went by, still nothing.

Then we called and sat on hold for over an hour. The person we reached said she’d work with her boss to expedite it and IT WORKED!! We got our letter within a week of calling. But we had to go down there, take another number, and pick it up. No matter, getting our sedula was a top priority so we didn’t mind. We took the letters straight to the Burgerzaken to finish the process and a week later we have our sedulas!

Overall it wasn’t too bad considering we moved to another country but it was stressing us out coming home day in and day out to find our mailbox empty and the date marching closer and closer to the 6 month mark.