VIENNA OFFICE

[Minicooper]

I have one other question for anyone else who has had to get a police clearance for the Netherlands (Certificate of Conduct for Natural Persons VOG NP). I understand the Embassy needs to complete the form before we can submit it to our local gemeentehuis. I presume we are to mail the form to the Vienna Embassy to complete before we lodge our full application to CIC? I'm going to check with our gemeentehuis that they definitely want the Embassy to complete the final pages, but if anyone else has gone through this recently, please let me know what you did. And how long it took for the Embassy to return the completed forms for the police clearance.

Many thanks!

Hi!

I just did this for the second time as my old one was expired. You don't have to get the visa office to fill it out. You fill it out yourself and what I did was put the visa office name and address on it. Then I ticked the boxes for visa/emigration. Fill it out as much as you can and leave the other things empty. I received my police check in the mail yesterday so you should be good! Let me know if you have any more question. But the people at het gemeentehuis should know. If they are giving you trouble ask them to double check. I have gotten people there that didn't know and others that did. Good luck!!

 

[Minicooper]

Thanks Avissa.

For supporting documents, I mean things like joint bank statements, leases, payslips, insurance policies, airline tickets, etc to prove our common-law relationship. Everything will be in English.

And do copies of our passports need to be certified? It seems that only documents which are not in English/French much be certified, but I wanted to check what others have done. Every single copy of every single document we submitted for my Australian visa had to be certified!

And I don't think I certified anything as my copies of everything were in English as well. I recently send a copy of my new passport and didn't certify it and they said they received it. Nothing else. So I think it was okay!

 

[MacnCheese]

Minicooper - amazing! Many thanks for your help. I'll take the forms to the gemeentehuis and hope to convince them to accept it. Relieved we don't need to get all the copies certified as well.

 

[Avissa]

Thanks Avissa.

For supporting documents, I mean things like joint bank statements, leases, payslips, insurance policies, airline tickets, etc to prove our common-law relationship. Everything will be in English.

And do copies of our passports need to be certified? It seems that only documents which are not in English/French much be certified, but I wanted to check what others have done. Every single copy of every single document we submitted for my Australian visa had to be certified!

No, you don't need to have certified copies. I asked my husband to scan some documents like the pay stubs and his contracts and email it to me, then I just printed them out. I also just printed the tickets out because they all have reference numbers and can easily be checked. The only things that had to be translated with an official stamp of the translator was our marriage certificate which was in Swedish, my birth certificate, and the German police certificate. Our passports were just photocopied at home.

 

[Avissa]

Hi guys,
Just had a question! Is there anyone else who has recently sent police certificate and is waiting for the glorious end result?

 

[Mikac15]

Hi guys,
Just had a question! Is there anyone else who has recently sent police certificate and is waiting for the glorious end result?

They requested my husband's on Oct 15 and he got passport request on Oct 24. Now we are just waiting for passport. When did you send the police check?

 

[Avissa]

They requested my husband's on Oct 15 and he got passport request on Oct 24. Now we are just waiting for passport. When did you send the police check?

They received mine on 24th Oct, but there is no news yet Did his ecas change to "decision made" when he got the email to send the passport?

 

[Mikac15]

They received mine on 24th Oct, but there is no news yet Did his ecas change to "decision made" when he got the email to send the passport?

Sometimes it takes a week or two for them to contact you. My husband's ECAS changed today to decision made even though we got the passport request on OCT 24. Even last week when we sent the passport it still said "in process". Don't trust ECAS, they update their information so late.

 

[svetlana]

Hello. Anybody from Viena office has exclusion order...?

 

[BS2020]

We decided to go with DHL overnight. DHL told us that Vienna changed the rules about two years ago. In order for Vienna to return the passport by using DHL, DHL has to contact VIENNA to see if the passport is ready. They had cases where DHL would be emailing everyday for 2 weeks to see when they can come by to pick up the package. It should be the other way around in my opinion. Vienna should call DHL when they are ready to send the package(s) (if the person paid for the RETURN in advance). It even says it in the email-letter my husband received that DHL has to contact them (VIENNA VISA OFFICE) by email to see when the package is ready which is crazy (I believe this portion of the email is old and just copy-pasted). Instead, Vienna now sends packages back via Austrian postal service, whatever that is.
So for everyone out there sending passport by mail (and not VAC centres) use a courier service like DHL, UPS or your local express post and don't worry about the return because Vienna won't return it like that.

You said you might go with DHL, what did you decide? Did you pay for the return? There was another person on this forum that said they paid for the return of the passport but Vienna returned the passport via Austrian postal service and she got her money back from DHL because the return waybill went unused.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to loop in the convo about sending the passport to Vienna. Vienna requested my husband's passport on October 28. He is currently in Canada, so we sent it by private courier. It's good to hear the Embassy might send it back via Austrian post. All of the couriers we spoke with said they don't contact the Embassy for the pick up, rather the Embassy is supposed to contact them. But, according to the Vienna instructions, the Embassy does not contact the courier. It seems like a dead end. We included a prepaid return coupon anyway. Any idea how long it takes for the passport to be returned via Austrian post?

We requested to have someone pick up the passport for us in person, so they can courier it back. Did anyone go through that route?

I'll let you know what ends up happening with our passport.

 

[mimosa86]

You can check ECAS for stage 1 only if you received an AOR (Acknowledgement of Receipt) from Mississauga. They send AOR before SA (Sponsor Approval) and in that letter/email they will write the sponsor's UCI number. Use that UCI number and the sponsor's details (DoB, Name, etc.) to log into ECAS and it will show the first stage. Sometimes it is possible though to receive AOR and SA on same day.

Later on, after you receive SA and the file gets transferred to the Visa Office abroad, another box will appear showing the status of stage 2 (under Principal Applicant).

If you need any help with that, send me a private message.

Thank you for your reply!

 

[Minicooper]

Hi guys,
Just had a question! Is there anyone else who has recently sent police certificate and is waiting for the glorious end result?

Yes me! Police certificate was mailed out
today so Vienna has not received it yet though. Hope you will hear something soon!!

 

[Mikac15]

Hello everyone!!
My husband got his COPR and passport today in the mail today!!!
We sent it on Oct 27, it arrived Oct 28 and today Nov 4 it arrived early in the morning!
Let me just let everyone know, dont pay return waybill with DHL, UPS AND OTHER PRIVATE COURIERS. Vienna will ignore the return since they use regular postal service. On the envelope it says "PRIORITY" and it says the embassy paid 15, 75€ to send the package with austrian postal service. DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY + DHL MOST LIKELY WONT EVEN ALLOW YOU TO PAY RETURN SINCE THEY HAVE DIFFICULTY WITH THE EMBASSY! PACKAGE MADE IT FROM VIENNA TO SERBIA IN 5 DAYS INCLUDING THE WEEKEND. JUST 5 DAYS!

We are so happy its over. Still will monitor the forum regularly to help out anyone who needs it. I've had a few experiences with Vienna so I can share my knowledge. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask!
GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE ELSE IT WILL BE OVER SOON! Trust me the waiting is hard but when that victory comes it is sooooo much sweeter! We are so happy and wish happiness to everyone out there!!!

 

[Mikac15]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to loop in the convo about sending the passport to Vienna. Vienna requested my husband's passport on October 28. He is currently in Canada, so we sent it by private courier. It's good to hear the Embassy might send it back via Austrian post. All of the couriers we spoke with said they don't contact the Embassy for the pick up, rather the Embassy is supposed to contact them. But, according to the Vienna instructions, the Embassy does not contact the courier. It seems like a dead end. We included a prepaid return coupon anyway. Any idea how long it takes for the passport to be returned via Austrian post?

We requested to have someone pick up the passport for us in person, so they can courier it back. Did anyone go through that route?

I'll let you know what ends up happening with our passport.

It took exactly 5 days for the passport to arrive from Vienna to Serbia with the weekend included, without its 3 business days. We sent it last Monday and this morning we got it in the mail!! Vienna does use Austrian Postal Service. They paid 15,75€ to send the package as priority mail., thats what it says on the envelope! Hope this helps anyone out there. My suggestion is dont pay gor return because they just use their own postal service. They dont seem to like private couriers!

 

[BS2020]

It took exactly 5 days for the passport to arrive from Vienna to Serbia with the weekend included, without its 3 business days. We sent it last Monday and this morning we got it in the mail!! Vienna does use Austrian Postal Service. They paid 15,75€ to send the package as priority mail., thats what it says on the envelope! Hope this helps anyone out there. My suggestion is dont pay gor return because they just use their own postal service. They dont seem to like private couriers!

Congratulations Mikac! That is wonderful news! I'm glad that the wait is finally over for you.

We received an email today from Vienna telling us to notify our courier that the passport is ready to be picked up. We went through FedEx (they gave us the most affordable rate). We will see what happens. Since the parcel is being mailed to Canada, not Serbia, it could be a different path. Hopefully there are no complications.