Family with infant, and disabled, autistic dad recovering from COVID, in a developing nation, caught between the bureaucracies of two countries, trying to keep our family together
10 November, 2021: We’re an American family with a daughter born in the Philippines during lockdown. I am autistic, and physically disabled. In addition to several unexpected financial whammies, a paperwork snafu on our daughter’s birth certificate is going to take about six more months to correct on the Filipino side (if we’re lucky), and only then can we BEGIN the process of having her US citizenship confirmed and get her a passport–which will take several more months–and on my disability.
Our visas will run out long before this mess is sorted, so Immigration says that unless we come up with about 12K USD for a different kind of visa, we will, legally, have to leave the country without our daughter, because she is stateless until this mess gets sorted. Normally we would just take a day trip outside the country to reset for another 36 months–and in fact, we were preparing to do than when lockdown hit–but thanks to the Philippines’ strict lockdown, if we leave, we can’t reenter on tourist visas. Obviously, leaving without our daughter is not an option.
I’m going to talk to Immigration again once I can be off of the oxygen machine for long enough, maybe see if I can get to someone with more authority, but they’ve already extended us ten months past the normal limit, so a longer extension is unlikely. If we somehow manage to not have to pay the 12K USD for the special visa, any money donated will go to paying off medical bills, and possibly help us relocate.
If you want more details: El’s birth had complications that more than tripled our hospital bill. Shortly after she was born, the project that was set to purchase one of my old stories for adaptation into a mobile game was canceled with no notice–literally days after I went into debt to replace my dying computer, counting on the money from the adaptation to pay it off. Then as the cherry on top of the entire mess, even though I’m fully vaxxed, I caught COVID, and am on oxygen recovering, so there’s that expense, too.
If you would like to help, but need to use Facebook Pay or some other means, message me and we’ll figure something out.
Thank you to everyone who has already contributed!
EDIT: It is illegal to do most kinds of work on a tourist visa, even if I were able, and if Zoey weren’t taking care of the baby and me full time. She is still looking for online remote work, though–the only kind she can legally do here–even though it pays less than half of US minimum wage. (One more way companies from wealthy nations exploit developed nations, but that’s a whole rant on its own.) It’s still not going to be enough, though.
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