Andrew finally getting a work permit also known as hanging out at the interior minister

Moving to Israel is super easy, if you’re Jewish. not only that, if you do move back, or do whats called aliyah, you get some pretty good perks, such as a flight to israel, passport after 6 months of residency, Israeli ID card, enrolled in the medical system, and well, no taxes for 10 years. a few perks.

Being a Goy, or if you prefer, “gentile“, i am not allowed to easily move to Eretz. It doesnt help that my wife is Israeli. sure, becoming canadian is no easy task, but at least you’re welcome to go through the motions and theres a clearly defined path. Here, in order to apply, you deal with the Interior Ministry, or also known as the gauntlet.

Before even moving, we started dealing with the interior ministy in the form of the Israeli Embassy in Israel. Noa would call, and they would only be working for a very short time a few times a week. they would tell her one thing once, and then next time she called, they would say something else. in the end, we got what we thought was a complete list of documents we would need. it included such standard things such as:

My birth certificate, criminal background check from Vancouver,marriage certificate, bills of our residency in israel, joint bank account in israel, photos from the last 14 years we have known each other, phone records of the last year showing we called each other, letters from all our family members saying how we met, letters from ourselves on how we met, and a letter stating that before we got married, i was single.

Fine, sure, we can do all that.

I had my original birth certificate from france where i was born. got the criminal background check before i left, printed photos, bills, wrote letters, and mostly got everything ready before our first meeting.

Now, let me back up a step. when i left in january, i was quote unquote moving to israel. I had my ferret in hand, too much luggage, and a one way ticket to Tel Aviv. I was moving, but that’s not what Israeli security thought when i arrived at the Toronto airport with my too much luggage and a ferret. i was asked such questions such as, well, does the interior ministry know your moving, and do you have documents stating that. no, i suggest i did not have such documents. well, we cannot allow you into the country on a one way ticket. you are a tourist, in that case, and well, tourists must leave…. To which i responded by telling noa to please call me, and i handed the phone to the very nice lady who was taking such an interest in me and let noa and her parents sort it out in their native dialect. long story short, a return flight was booked for myself, and i was allowed to accompany my poor ferret onto the aircraft.

Having had that experience, i was quite eager to amass some sort of status in this country that i was moving too, and therefore was very excited to get started at the interior ministry. foolish andrew. never get excited about something that has the word “ministry” and “interior” in them. unless its so happens to be this ministry. neverless, noa and i dragged ourself to the building in tel aviv, went through security, and walked in upon mayhem. we too a number for such mayhem, and proceeded to watch a master class in “how to keep people out of your country”. i think that must be offered in university. i must have missed that class though.

There are two groups of people. those with appointments, or the happier ones, and those without appointments, and thus tickets with a number on them, also know as the downtrodden. on this first trip, noa and i were on a mission to book an appointment for ourselves. We got there, got a ticket, and proceeded to wait for two hours. Noa had an appointment that day, so we had to abandon the mission. But the following day we came again, super early, and managed to talk with someone within an hour or so. She said yes, we could book an appointment, but it would be for end of April!! This was January! One document on the list we were not sure how to get was a paper saying I was single before we got married. We asked how we would go about getting one of those, and they said the Canadian embassy here would do that. Well, turns out that for 100 shekels the Canadian embassy will indeed give you a piece of paper that says they cannot give you a piece of paper saying you we’re single before. Well good.

The first meeting eventually came, and this time we were amongst the happier ones. We had our meeting time, and finally got to speak with someone. Now, this person spoke perhaps two word to me the whole time. Noa did all the talking. We handed all our documents over slowly, she commented that we look very young in our first photo together, and then proceeded to question us about two documents we that we did not have. Before we talk about the problem papers, as I was still missing documents, we made a new appointment for after our two month trip to North America, for mid August. this was 4 months in the future when we booked it. and that was it for our first meeting.

Okay so the two problem papers were my original French birth certificate and my criminal background check. We were told neither document could be accepted by them, as they do not have Apostille stamps on them. Ahh what now? Apparently Apostille is a EU and US stamp that confirms the authenticity of a paper. For france we would have to send it to them, and they would stamp it. Now Canada though does not do these, so how we’re we to get my Canadian background check stamped? The Israeli consulate in Toronto.

This now becomes a tale of two papers. Let’s start with my birth certificate. We found out in order to get it apostilled, we would need the issuing agency to verify the document first. And then we could send it to the appostilling agency. Luckily I had my god mother helping out in France, and she eventually found out after talking to some people that they would not verify my birth certificate because I was applying for immigration with my wife in another country which meant I was married and why was my status in the French database not listed as married. No monsieur, this will not do! Okay, how do we change my status to married in France? At the French embassy in vancouver. Doh! That’s not going to work…. Okay, plan B. Order a new birth certificate. Easy peasy, and mailed it to my god mothers. Well, a month passes, and still not arrived. Finally we figure out that in France they will not mail a letter to an address that you obviously don’t live in. Arg! By this point we were running out of time. Okay, plan C. Mail new birth certificate to Vancouver, when we get there, we mail it to Israel, and from there it gets mailed to france and back!

Well plan C eventually worked. we heard it arrived a week before we got back, and we got it translated too. so there could be no doubt that its the original (has an apostille) and it was translated to hebrew! bam, one doc down with a week to spare before the meeting.

So the criminal background check. Since we had found out that we would need to send it to the Israeli embassy in Toronto, we called them to figure out how that would work. they told us its only accepted from a canadian address, in a pre-stamped return envelope. ohh boy. so that meant we could not send it until we were back in vancouver, and that would give us a month for the doc to send, get stamped, and sent back to us before we left onwards on our trip. that should be enough time, right?

Well, we sent it right after the wedding in calgary and had almost a month to get it back. then we continued on all our travels. about a few days before we were heading to portland and onwards, we were a little worried that nothing had arrived yet. The funny thing is that my mom had told me that the israeli foreign ministry is on strike. but we were like, ha, no problem, we are dealing with the interior ministry. but then noa called them in toronto, and someone answered, and told her, well, yes, we have been on strike since the day after you sent the document. its sitting right here…..

Well, noa informed the lady that we had a meeting right after we get back, and that we would need that document. she told them to tell the interior ministry that well, they have been on strike, and they should understand. and then they both started laughing. so at this point, there was about a month before our meeting. and we decided, if they are on strike, there is really nothing that we can do about it. we set up a envelope to have the document sent to us here in israel, so the moment it arrived to vancouver it would be sent to us. and off we went.

about a week before our meeting, we hear that the strike is over, and the document has made it to vancouver. it was sent on to us, and ohh we are so hopeful that it will be there and this will be our final meeting.

the day arrived, and still nothing. we go to the meeting, give them the french appostilled birth certificate, and they say that we now have 45 days to produce the final document, or the whole process is cancelled… ohh great. but we know its on the way for sure. and as expected, the final document arrived the day after our meeting. so the next day, noa’s parents bring us the document at around 9:30am, so we get to the interior ministry for 10am or so? and end up waiting about 3 hours to talk to someone at the window. it’s the lady from the other day, and she takes the last document from us, and tells us they will call us for our appointment to get the visa.

so almost a month full of holidays is coming up, tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah, and we did not want to wait a month in order to finally get my visa. but we had to wait for them to call us. two weeks passed, and then finally they set up a meeting for us last sunday. this time we show up early again, get right in, and the place is empty. we go for our appointment, stamp stamp visa in passport, and we are out of there! a journey that has taken us from january until the the first of september is over! i got a 6 month work visa.

what this means is that in 3 months we go online and somehow book another appointment for in 3 months. we go in again, and get another 6 month work visa. rinse, repeat, and then i will finally get yearly visa’s after that.

if you hung in there for this whole diatribe, thanks. i just had to get it all down somehow.