Destination China - First Leg

I handed my passport, boarding pass, and departure slip to the immigrations officer at the Brisbane International Airport. Check-in and security check transpired smoothly and quickly, and this was the last checkpoint before I could enter the International terminal to catch my flight to Singapore, and onward to China.

The officer looked at the documents and scanned my passport. “How long have you been in Australia?”

“A little over two years,” I said.

“You don’t have a visa on this passport,” she explained.

“It’s on my old passport which was going to expire this year. This is my renewed passport.”

“Well, you should’ve had the visa transferred to your new passport. Do you have your old passport?”

Transfer the visa to my new passport? The Australian visa was applied to my old passport electronically. A stamp or sticker was never physically added to the old passport. Surely, they had record of my visa and old passport somewhere in their database of records.

“Yes, but it’s in my checked bags.”

She frowned, clearly unimpressed and skeptical of my answer. “I need you to go over there for further questioning”. She was pointing to the far end of the counters and motioned to another immigration officer to escort me to the holding area. My heart sank. We were cutting it close to making the flight, and a long delay here would certainly mean a missed flight. After a 3-month process to get our Chinese visas approved, filled with red tape and delays, it seemed ironic that my departure was in jeopardy by Australian immigration because of my new passport, which was renewed in order to conform to Chinese immigration law stating that visa entrants can not enter the country with a passport set to expire within 6 months.  I took a deep breath, quickly told a waiting Amber that I was needed for questioning about my visa, and followed the officer to the holding area.

Department of Immigration
and Citizenship

After months of anticipation and waiting, our departure date to China had finally arrived.

We woke up around 7am and did our “Insanity” workout as scheduled  - not even relocating countries was going to stop us from getting our work out on!

After the difficult, yet invigorating work out, we got ready, packed the last of our things, checked out of our hotel room that we had called home for the past 2 months, and taxied to the Brisbane International Airport. The check-in and security processes were unusually quick and easy. We even didn’t have to pay the overweight baggage fees. We congratulated ourselves on how easy it had all been.

The line to get through immigration was fairly long, but moved steadily. After 15 minutes in line Amber passed through immigration without incident, but I was being escorted to the holding area. The area consisted of a makeshift cubicle office with a sitting area in the front occupied by two families also needing further questioning.

I handed my documents to the immigrations officer who chided me that I should have been carrying both passports. I purposely didn’t carry both passports because I thought it was illegal to do so! I didn’t tell the officer this, as she didn’t look like she was in the mood to have a two-way conversation. 

While she scanned my passport and made a phone call (perhaps to Interpol, the CIA, or ASIO?), I imagined myself as the next feature on the popular Australian TV show, “Border Security”. It’s a reality TV show that chronicles the everyday workings of the Australian customs and immigrations officers. Most of the show is focused on following agents as they question and search (and usually find) illegal contraband, or question people with dubious travel intentions and/or questionable visas or passports. I could see myself in one of the interview rooms being patronizingly questioned by an immigration officer. Between the questionings, the TV host, with his overly dramatic and accusatory voice, would question why I had a brand new passport without an Australian visa and hint at the possibility that my stay in Australia had been illegal which could result in my imminent deportation. I would put my head in my hands asking myself, “Why is this happening?” while viewers at home would be quick to judge, “Yup, that bloke is up to no good. Deport him!”

After 5 minutes on the phone, the immigration officer handed my documents back to me, told me that I was free to go, and instructed me to transfer my visa to the new passport - yeah, I’ll be sure to do that seeing that it would expire upon my departure within the hour!

With the brief scare now behind us, we were back on schedule and had enough time to grab a quick breakfast in the terminal before boarding the plane to Singapore.

Click here to read the next post, "Destination China - 2nd Leg"