Babies born to Belarussian citizen
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Travel
A bit of a random blog but something that happened to me quite recently and completely upset my holiday plans.
I and my husband K. talked about bringing his parents to Belarus for the last two years. We were meant to go last year, but I got pregnant and we put off those plans till we were ready. Then in January flight sales we saw that the prices for flights to Poland were ridiculously low and so we decided that we would take Alexei and K’s parents to Belarus on holiday in July.
We spent a lot of time discussing where we would go, what sights we would see, we booked our hotels and as the time of holiday got nearer we decided to apply for a visa both for K and Alexei as they are both Irish born citizens while I hold a Belarussian passport.
The information regarding visa fees for children was not clear on the website of Belarussian Embassy in London so we decided to give them a call. That’s when the fiasco started.. It took us three days to reach the embassy as no one was picking up the phones or it was constantly busy as if it was just taken off the hook... When we called a different part of the Embassy we were told that in those 2 hours that are allocated for visa enquiries there are a lot of calls… But we knew that could not be a case as we were ringing with 3 different phones at the same time to try and reach someone..
Anyways, on the third day we finally reached someone and were able to ask the question. However, the answer was not what we expected. Upon learning that I am a Belarussian citizen, the answer was Alexei will not be issued a visa as he is a Belarussian citizen. When K. told them no Alexei is an Irish citizen and holds an Irish passport the reply was as his mother is Belarussian he is Belarussian citizen. What we needed to do was to apply for a return certificate, which would have been fine with us if not for the fact that once we enter Belarus we will not be able to exit it until Alexei obtains his Belarussian passport and this could take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months.. We were going on holidays for less than two weeks.
There is no way of making a passport for Alexei through Embassy and from one of our acquaintances we heard that once he gets his Belarussian passport they will force him to give up his Irish passport and that will ever happen unless it is by his own choice when he is old enough.
So what would you have done in our place? Even though I was really looking forward to seeing my grandmothers and other relatives we ended up changing our tickets to Spain with loss of money and instead spent a lovely holiday in San Sebastian.
In future when we have time to make a passport for Alexei and have flexibility to request more holiday time we will travel to Belarus. But for now that seems like a distant future. One thing for sure we will never book our tickets before finding out all of information before-hand
I and my husband K. talked about bringing his parents to Belarus for the last two years. We were meant to go last year, but I got pregnant and we put off those plans till we were ready. Then in January flight sales we saw that the prices for flights to Poland were ridiculously low and so we decided that we would take Alexei and K’s parents to Belarus on holiday in July.
We spent a lot of time discussing where we would go, what sights we would see, we booked our hotels and as the time of holiday got nearer we decided to apply for a visa both for K and Alexei as they are both Irish born citizens while I hold a Belarussian passport.
The information regarding visa fees for children was not clear on the website of Belarussian Embassy in London so we decided to give them a call. That’s when the fiasco started.. It took us three days to reach the embassy as no one was picking up the phones or it was constantly busy as if it was just taken off the hook... When we called a different part of the Embassy we were told that in those 2 hours that are allocated for visa enquiries there are a lot of calls… But we knew that could not be a case as we were ringing with 3 different phones at the same time to try and reach someone..
Anyways, on the third day we finally reached someone and were able to ask the question. However, the answer was not what we expected. Upon learning that I am a Belarussian citizen, the answer was Alexei will not be issued a visa as he is a Belarussian citizen. When K. told them no Alexei is an Irish citizen and holds an Irish passport the reply was as his mother is Belarussian he is Belarussian citizen. What we needed to do was to apply for a return certificate, which would have been fine with us if not for the fact that once we enter Belarus we will not be able to exit it until Alexei obtains his Belarussian passport and this could take anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months.. We were going on holidays for less than two weeks.
There is no way of making a passport for Alexei through Embassy and from one of our acquaintances we heard that once he gets his Belarussian passport they will force him to give up his Irish passport and that will ever happen unless it is by his own choice when he is old enough.
So what would you have done in our place? Even though I was really looking forward to seeing my grandmothers and other relatives we ended up changing our tickets to Spain with loss of money and instead spent a lovely holiday in San Sebastian.
In future when we have time to make a passport for Alexei and have flexibility to request more holiday time we will travel to Belarus. But for now that seems like a distant future. One thing for sure we will never book our tickets before finding out all of information before-hand
