Paperwork before I go
When I was applying for the Fulbright, the helpful staff members held several webinars during which the main takeaway was "please read and follow all the directions". That was before applying for the grant. After getting the grant, then came the true paperwork challenges, and how!
By the time I write this, I'm past most of these hurdles, and they seem diminished in hindsight. But at the time, figuring out how get in touch with the right bureaucratic agency was anxiety-producing, especially for a compulsive organizer like myself, and so I took lots of notes just in case a future me needed a peek at all that heading to Panama on a Fulbright award entails.
And so here, for your reading pleasure (?!), is the saga of my pre-departure paperwork.
Medical forms. The Fulbright folks said I should do this 2-5 months before I go to Panama, and they also said they'd need it before they can give me my contract, which I need before I can buy plane tickets, which I need before I can get the visa . . . but the earliest my doctor could fit me in was one-month-and-28-days before the start of my trip. I hoped this would be early enough.
Update: Once my doctor appointment finally happened (I'm healthy, with somewhat low iron, possibly because of giving blood), I pulled together the pdf with all the attached files from the doc (list of past medications, list of current medications, list of vaccinations). I hit "submit", and . . . Yoicks! It was too large to upload to the Fulbright site. So I futzed and futzed with it. The medical form is 10 pages long, plus the attachments from the doctor. I removed the medical proxy pages, hoping that would reduce the size of the file, and it did. Phew!
Update^2: Two days after I submitted it, the med form was accepted and approved. Yay!
Vaccines. I think it wasn't the Fulbright or Embassy people, but rather our Director of International Studies, who mentioned this: there are places that specialize in vaccines for travelers. I made an appointment with the aptly titled "Travel Health Services of Lancaster", bringing along my vaccine record for them to inspect. I got a Yellow Fever shot in the arm (a live vaccine) and a 4-day regimen of pills to give me typhoid immunity for 5 years, as well as a packet of information, basically warning me to be careful of mosquitos and of water (drinking, eating vegetables rinsed in, etc). Cost: $435.
In addition, I got a prescription for a malaria-prevention regimen, in case we travel outside of Panama City for an extended period, and a prescription for severe diarrhea, and also advice to update my Hep A and TDAP vaccines. Also (but at least 4 weeks away from my Yellow Fever vaccine), another round of MMR. Those, apparently, I can do at my local pharmacy and be covered by insurance.
FBI clearance. This was the really big bureaucratic headache. The ambassador told me that I'd need this for my visa; she told me this about this the same day I'd uploaded my medical paperwork, which was 8 weeks before the day I want to be in Panama. The ambassador told me that FBI clearances usually take 13-15 weeks. I freaked just a bit, because I'd just taken care of what I thought would be my most time-sensitive paperwork, and now I had whole other shebang of stuff to deal with.
For some reason, I thought going into this process that I'd need the paperwork for visa before going to Panama, but it looks like "visa" is the wrong word: I'll apply for temporary resident/immigration while I'm already in Panama. That takes a little bit of time pressure off, for sure!
After lots of web searches, an in-person trip to a fingerprint place that wouldn't fingerprint me, and a few more hours of banging away at the keyboard, I learned the following.
- The first step is to get a fingerprint card. If you live in Pennsylvania, you can sign up for an appointment at identogo.com.
- You want a fingerprint card, not an FBI background check. People in other states told me they could do it electronically at USPS, but apparently not so here in Pennsylvania.
- [Day 0] I spent an hour trying to get the identogo website to work, and never got past the final "documents needed page". Finally when I switched my browser from Chrome to Safari, it went smoothly. This got me an appointment for fingerprinting at a place a half-hour from the house and two days in the future.
- [The only reason I thought to switch browsers is that I have exactly the same problem with filing my Lancaster taxes . . . the web form in Chrome takes me all the way to the end and then crosses its arms and sticks out its lower lip at me, no matter how much I plead for it to just let me hit "submit". So, it seems I should Safari for government-based web forms.]
- [Day 2] I made an appointment for 8:50 on a Thursday morning, and when I showed up there was a sign saying they'd be closed until 10:00 a.m. today, sorry, please come back later. I fortunately had shopping in the area I could do, and also a book to read, and so at 10:00 I got fingerprinted. [$21.20]. I got two sets of fingerprint cards, just in case.
- I filled out the paperwork to send this fingerprint card and a credit card voucher to the background check place. [$57.95, which is $39.95 for the background check and an optional $18 for 2-day mail, because I wasn't sure about timing turnaround or whether the physical copy they send is nicer in some way than the online version they say I'll have access to.]
- For some reason, I couldn't find a way to submit this paperwork electronically; I had to mail it. It's crazy, because the fingerprint place scanned my prints, and then printed them. Couldn't I just electronically send things some place? Apparently, no.
- [Day 7]: I get an email (that's nice!) saying, "Your FBI criminal history report order has been received. The application and fingerprint cards will be reviewed by our quality control staff. If everything is in order, the fingerprints will be submitted to the FBI."
- [Day 8]. I get an email that my report is available online, for downloading. I set up an account, and download the document for printing. (A warning tells me that after someone views or downloads this document, regulations require them to delete the online version within 24 hours).
- [Day 10]. The paper FBI reports come back. They're the same as the online version that I then print out (that is, there's no fancy seal on the ones they printed for me. So there seems to be no advantage at all to paying to have them mailed -- it takes longer and costs more.)
- (. . . or do we need it notaritzed? The apostille website says, "Before submitting your documents to us, you must (a) get a notary public to notarize each document", but the "Panama Fulbright Survival Guide" that past participants have pulled together seem to say it's not necessary. When I called a local notary, he said that yes, documents that need apostilles need to get notarized first, but when I made an appointment to do just that, it was fairly clear he'd never seen the FBI background check before, so I attached the notary page just in case . . . but I think I'm not going to do that for my husband's background check.)
- Federal documents (like the FBI background check) get apostilles at a different place than state-issued documents (like our marriage certificate). The apostille takes a couple of weeks, I was warned. [$40 for the apostille fees and $19.70 for registered mail].
Fact: According to the notary and to Google, "Apostille" is pronounced, "uh - PAA -stil", not—as I tried to pronounce it—"ah - po - STEEL").
Another Fact: According to the State Department telephone automated system, "Apostille" is pronounced, "ah - po - STEEL", not—as Google and the notary pronounce it—"uh - PAA -stil"). - My husband, who has been on a trip overseas, starts this process about two weeks after me. I'd pre-addressed all the envelopes and written two checks, one for $40 for my first-round set of documents and one for $20 for his documents. When I get ready to send his documents, I realize I still have the $40 check -- I'd sent the wrong check with my first mailing. AARRRRGGGHHH!
- [Day 45] The State Department sends me an email with the subject line "fee shortage", and let me know about the mistake I knew about. I am just relieved that they're in touch, instead of assigning my paperwork to bureaucratic purgatory.
They give me a telephone number and an account code, and said I could pay the difference by credit card. I called, navigated my way through the obligatory automated system, and spent only about 15 minutes on hold before a very kind woman on the other end of the line found my application (under a completely different account code), accepted my payment, and assured me that my apostille approval was in process. - [Day 49] My non-notarized, apostilled grant and FBI documents (the second set) arrived at home. They tell me they can't apostille my grant documents without a notarization. They do have apostilles of our non-notarized FBI paperwork, though. Phew!
- [Day 54] My notarized, apostilled grant and FBI documents (the first set) arrived at home. They tell me that I need my state government to apostille my grant documents. I'm pretty sure I don't actually need the grant documents apostilled at all.
- Then we take the whole shebang to Panama, where we get it translated, and THEN we can get the visa/immigration paperwork done.
Five passport-sized photos. These also are needed for the immigration paperwork. Instead of going to CV$, I had a tech-savvy friend from my college print out 5 glossy copies of 2"x2" photos my husband and I took of each other against a white wall. During our Fulbright "PDO" (Pre Departure Orientation) in early July, I was encouraged to send one photo electronically to a particular embassy official ahead of time, to get my Fulbright badge set up. I did just this a week later, and immediately got back the message:
I’ll be Out of Office from June 12 to September 17.
Yeah. So, there's that.
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