Being ingnored by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration

Hi hi Dalene,  Im so sorry to hear that.Im from Namibia Windhoek im in France now. But going back on August only for a month. Im afraid that you have to go there to Windhoek at Home Affairs. But since im going there i can go to Home Affairs and ask them what you can do. So to me it will be easy to be in touch if you have Viber or Skype or Watsup to have more information because i dont understand so well about your father.
Oh sorry my name is Isa.

Hello Dalene,

While I'm not from Namibia I can tell you from experience advising people on immigrations issues here on Expat-blog that many people tend to fall into the trap of thinking that THEIRS is the only case that immigrations authorities have to deal with and they become overly concerned or impatient and upset when there is no action for months on end. Clearly, this is not the case; even small countries may have thousands of individual applications to deal with and usually do not have sufficient staff levels in order to do the processing efficiently.

First of all you must understand that issues dealing with permanent residency or citizenship are far different and much more complex than simple applications for Tourist Visas or Work Visas, which, of necessity, tend to be handled quickly. You simply cannot compare the processing of one to the other. Regarding permanency and/or citizenship many countries must do thorough background checks, verify documents, check criminal records or the absence of records, etc. Often this involves different governmental agencies, departments or ministries not directly involved in immigration and each of them operates on their own clock. Also, government imposed bureaucracy and procedures differ from country to country, making the process much longer in some than in others.

It is also common in many countries that immigration authorities simply do not respond to e-mails. Many do not have the staff to dedicate to this task and if they were to take someone away from their other duties to handle correspondence then other aspects of processing would be delayed.

Please don't think that I'm just trying to make excuses for bureaucracy, because I'm not. But, you must understand that this bureaucracy exists in ALL countries and in some it is much worse than in others. For example, I was going through a permanency application here in Brazil that dragged on for almost 5 years. When I became completely dissatisfied with the interminable delays I entered into a new process, which nullified the original application and still it took 2 more years to finally resolve. It is NOT something that happens overnight, as much as we would like it to.

Often too, if you continue to send letters, e-mails and make telephone calls about an application (and this should never happen, but we don't live in a perfect world) this only tends to irritate those involved in your application process and they simply put you on the "back burner" for a while in order to retaliate.

My best advice to you, if you cannot physically go to the offices of the Ministry of Home Affairs in order to find out the information you're looking for, is to somehow find a huge dose of patience and wait until somebody can do that for you. Once you've got some information or feel that you're not going to get a lot of information anyway, then just let these pencil pushers do their thing, their way, because in the end, try as we might, complain as we might, nothing is ever going to change them.

Cheers,
William James Woodward, EB Experts Team

Hi Dalene,

The ministry of home affairs and immigration is notoriously slow, frustrating, and unhelpful.  I've been dealing with them for many years now and it hasn't gotten easier, unfortunately.  But there is one thing you can do to help yourself; you must find a visa agent.  I personally use Marietha Bouwer Agencies in Windhoek.  You can email them at [email protected].  They will tell you what you need to apply, send you the forms, and once they have what they need from you, they deal with the ministry for you.  And their fees are very reasonable.  I think this is your best bet.

Good luck,
Shelly

I've been waiting for my Certificate of Identity for nearly a year now, I applied after 6 trips to the Immigratrion office in Walvis Bay. Luckily I am domiciled through marriage to a Namibian, but I know how frustrating things can be here.

Where I come from in the UK, this sort of application would have been done inside a month, it seems that the Namibian officials are unsure of their own system and documents, so the advice above of using an agent is the best advice anyone can give you.

I didn't use an agent, and found out the hard way how frustrating 'African Time' can be....