Communication Breakdowns

One of the more frustrating aspects of living in a foreign country is understanding the immigration laws. For our time in Indonesia, my company has an entire department dedicated to assisting expats with all of the rules and processes of Indonesian immigration. I don't even have to think about it. Delivering our baby in Singapore is turning out to be a much different experience.

We've done what reading we can on the subject, so we know that we need our marriage certificate, our passports, and about seven days of time to obtain a passport for our son once he is born. We will need this passport for him to enter Indonesia. We also know from our last trip to Singapore, that the airlines have a cutoff date for pregnant women. According to our doctor in Singapore, the international policy for airlines is 32 weeks, but because Jakarta is a mere one hour flight from Singapore, they typically allow up to 34 weeks.

This week, we put all of that to the test. My wife saw her local doctor and mentioned that we would be heading to Singapore on Thursday. Her doctor said she could not approve a departure after Monday. So now I'm scrambling to determine our options. Our apartment in Singapore isn't ready until Thursday. Our tickets are for Thursday.

I explained the situation to my admin, and asked her to call the medical facility we use (International SOS), and the airline, to determine what we can do. Things move much more smoothly here when discussed in the local language. She was able to discover that SOS was "unaware" that we were going to Singapore to deliver. This came as a shock to us as we've told them that at every visit and even went to Singapore in July, on a referral from them, to meet with the doctor and visit the hospital that will perform the delivery.

Once they knew we were going there to deliver, that helped. They called the airline and facilitated travel pre-approval. This also introduced a new problem, however. They asked if we had the required visa to allow us to deliver a baby in Singapore. Singapore is very strict about people coming there to deliver - to the point of not allowing pregnant women without the appropriate visa to leave the airport. To deliver there, a family must apply for the visa and sign documents stating that the child will have the nationality of the parents and they are not seeking Singaporean citizenship. SOS informs us this process typically requires one month.

Great! I have 4 days to do something that requires a month. They send me all the paperwork - 33 pages in all - that we need to fill out. Once again, I start asking for options. Can we complete it when we get there? Can we pay a fee to expedite? How come no one told us this when we had enough time to pursue it? Once they found out I was angry, they asked if we were American citizens. "Yes". American citizens are not required to fill out the paperwork. The appropriate visa is automatically given to US citizens. Apparently Americans are not ones to give up their citizenship and become Singaporeans.

Apparently we're also the ones who get angry....