registration

omnii

[quote=Nick-H;840949]Like I said, one day, you might actually meet this "they".

i use they to protect the names of the innocent. lol!

dzibead

Bwahahaha! Beware of anything any "insiders" connected with Goa tell you. For a painful look at what all the Goa misinformation has led to, check out these threads, if you have the fortitude: Foreign owned property in Goa, (Part One) and Foreign owned property in Goa, (part Two)

The FRO's in Goa are also fairly notorious for either not knowing what they're doing with respect to visas and registration of foreigners - or not caring. Or at least this was the case in the past. With all the attention now focused on the illegal acquisitions of real property by foreign nationals, they may have cleaned up their act. But one notable example (notable to me, at any rate) of gross misinformation involved someone who actually used to be a member here but hasn't been seen for ages. She was an American with a 10-year tourist visa who was choking down all our throats that she didn't have to leave every 180 days and could stay in India for the whole ten years because she had been registered as a "resident" and the local "authorities" told her this was OK. She also "bought" property on the strength of her supposed resident status. (Foreign nationals who are not legally "resident in India" are not allowed to buy real property there.) This particular individual had sold up in the U.S. and "retired" to India, permanently ... or so she thought ... saying she had cut all ties with the U.S., had no connections back there anymore, no reason to return, India was now her "home," blah blah. She also said she didn't have the financial means or the health to leave India every 180 days, but that, contrary to what everyone here was telling her, she didn't have to worry about that because of the ten year visa and her "residency". She actually became quite nasty and aggressive when some of us told her that she was just wrong. To make a long story short, in the middle of the firestorm that erupted over the real property "purchases" by foreigners in Goa, the individual in question posted a couple of frantic messages here saying she desperately needed to sell her property in short order because of some some unspecified emergency that had supposedly cropped up in the U.S. -- the place to which she claimed she no longer had ties. My guess? The authorities had gotten wind that she'd overstayed the 180 day limit and illegally purchased property on a tourist visa, had canceled her visa and were in the process of deporting her. After the frantic messages, we've never heard a peep out of her since -- which deprived us of the opportunity to say "I told you so."

So much for "insiders" advice re: what can be done in Goa.

And if you are going to continue implying that people can do this, that, or the other by greasing various palms, that's a good way to get yourself banned from IM. The site administrator tends to frown on advising people on how to break the law. Moreover, as a practical matter, doing things illegally with the connivance some local cop or other official whom you decide to bribe is a good way to open yourself to extortion by that very same official. Not a situation you want to be in.

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GoanCanuck

Which one is it? You should make up your mind before posting and making a fool of yourself.

machadinha

... Moreover, breaking the laws this way & having been caught out, any fines and/or prison sentences apart (and a generally guaranteed to be unpleasant time while being processed through either -- getting even duly sentenced in India can take notoriously forever), you can count on being barred from ever entering the country again, or at least for a very long time to come.

Specialist travel agencies and/or certain "insiders," eh? Right Let's hope they'll be willing to toss you in a sandwich & some bottled water (a few condoms?) every now and then.

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namaste_cat

Good point. People sometimes think anything goes in "third world" countries, so visa rules are for chumps, hence don't apply to them.

Nick-H

Here's a visa story. It's not exactly relevant, but it still shows an example of how "they", that official mind, work.

A couple of years ago, a batch of Indian visa stickers were stolen in Malaysia. The Indian authorities had records of the serial numbers, and, sure enough they began to appear in passports of visitors to India. What was happening was that a number of travel agents in Malaysia, who were supposed to be handling visa applications for their clinets, were sticking these forms and pocketing the money.

The Indian authorities attitude to the poor passengers was that they had not, knowingly, committed any offence, and India did not intend to take any action against them --- but nor did they have valid visas and they would not be permitted entry to the country.

dzibead

This is an attitude I see here at IM quite often, along with the related notion that foreigners should just be able to move to India permanently or at least indefinitely -- in other words, to immigrate -- just because they feel like it - as if foreigners could do this in their countries! This attitude also often coupled with indignation or even outrage at the "obstacles" the Indian government has placed in the way of them fulfilling their "dreams" (dreams which, to my cynical self, generally seem to fall into one of three categories: (1) sitting on their fat asses in a beach hut in Goa, drinking like fish; (2) being some kind of "do-gooder," usually involving something to do with children and poverty, as if there were no needy children in their own home countries to help - but of course helping them would not be exotic; or (3) living in an ashram or monastery - for free, of course).

This attitude seriously bugs the hell out of me. It indicates to me that these people absolutely fail to recognize that India is a sovereign nation with its own immigration policies that it has every right to implement, just as the "dreamers'" own countries do. Based on what I've seen here at IM, I'm sorry to say that my British "cousins" seem to be among the worst offenders in this regard. Newsflash, folks: THE RAJ IS OVER! And to my fellow Americans who don't "get it": the U.S. may be the "800 lb. gorilla" but that doesn't mean you get to sit anywhere you want to!

Nick-H

Doesn't a year's hard work ever cause you to have such a dream? --- excluding the "fat", of course

I just posted the link to the form one has to fill in for the British visitor visa (here), and filling out the form is only the start. We had to give all of the original documents for our property and entire savings with the application.

dzibead

Heh. The "fat" part is the only thing that applies to me.

And that's just to visit.

Indians applying for U.S. visitor visas are also subjected to very probing interviews by consular personnel who are fixated on trying to determine whether the applicant has sufficient ties to India that he/she actually intends to return instead of trying to stay on in the U.S. as an immigrant, legal or otherwise. One of my friends who wanted to come to the U.S. to visit her brother after the birth of his first child was actually reduced to showing her Caesarian scar at the interview to prove that she actually had had the children who were staying behind in India and whose photos she had brought to the interview to show that she still had "ties" to the country! Imagine what the reaction of the average American or Brit would be to having to deal with that when applying for a visa simply to visit India!