Immigration Business

Hey Beloved friends

Today is National Heroes Day in Jamaica. I haven't celebrated that holiday since I was a child, but it festive where the local civil servants all dress up in their service uniforms. The parks have fun games and music for the youth, and in some places, street dances will take place in the night. John and I spent our day on the road coming back from a fun weekend with our family and friends in Kingston. All public places are closed for the day, which means no business or fancy restaurant opens its doors until Tuesday 20Th.

This fun weekend came with a few challenges, however.

For those of who don't know, in order for John to live and work in Jamaica, he needs to specific paperwork approving his presence in Jamaica. It is an expensive and tedious process, seeing that the governmental agencies in JA are still behind in technology, and so filled with bureaucracy, that you often end up running around in concentric circles before finally reaching your destination.

We arrived in Kingston just about midnight Thursday, thanks to my father who picked us up at the end of his and our work day and drove us 3 1/2hours back from MOntego Bay. We went to the Immigration office, where we realized as of OCTOBER 1st a new $10,000JA tax was added to the process of getting one's work permit. This is in addition to the $2,000 service fee. We were sent from Immigration because they said we were supposed to have on us a letter from Ministry of Labour before we could be processed. We jumped back into the car and drove across town to the Ministry of Labour. After we got seen and had our papers looked at, we were informed that, just in case we were interested in knowing, an additional $14,400J tax had been added to what we were trying to do!!! Also, they would not take our money, we were supposed to go the bank to pay, and bring the receipt back to the Ministry of Labour and we would take it from there.

I don't know if you can imagine our reaction...We looked at the clock and realized if we hurried we could make it to the bank before it closed, so we rushed out and got a bit lost before finding the bank. We went inside, and found that approximately 1/18th of Jamaica had decided to spend their afternoon in the bank as well!! (LOL of course I'm exaggerating!...it was just a big crowd inside though!) We found out we never had to join that long line, but a little one off to the side, and so we paid our fee and ran back to the Ministry of Labour triumphantly!

No one was there. In the half an hour it had taken to get our business paid for, the officers in charge had signed out, and were left hanging. We spoke to anyone who would listen, but the officers from the ministry that we needed to get our letter signed, were just not there. As a result, John now needs to take another day off to go into Kingston to get his papers finally sorted out, as today was not an option because of the holiday.




Our prayer requests? John's speedy paperwork process and his safety.



We also just want to thank you all for your support which makes it possible for us to be here, doing what we are doing. We had a nice sum come in recently which has been an awesome testimony of your support, and of us being here as part of team. We miss hearing from you all, please write us!

There will be more updates coming in soon, we are just very tired from coming in from Kingston this evening, and ready to call it a night!
Coming in this week, will be our mailing address here in Jamaica, and reminders of different ways you can send in your tax-deductible checks! Thank you so much, our awesome friends!


Blessings!
Danya and John