Immigration for Minors

I’d be happy to share an interesting case where we assisted one of our clients with whom we have a long-standing relationship. An Indian origin, foreign national and minor son had moved back to India about 18 years ago. The mother is a stake holder, which allows her visa free entry into India and her son had a 5-year entry visa. The father had left a long time ago and was not involved with the alimony of the child. The mother had full custody however, the father withheld the child’s passport despite multiple requests for him to return it. He then declared that he had lost the passport. The son eventually overstayed for a period of 10 years, which of course is not compliant. Only once the son turned 16 years of age was he able to obtain a new passport.

As they were both to live in India a long term. The solution was to obtain an OCF card for the son, which would solve the problem of obtaining visa extensions every year. However, this was a really complicated case because of the overstay. The officers in India were requesting for a no objection certificate from the father before accepting the application. Now, after multiple attempts to justify the situation with the local immigration officers we assisted the client in putting together the required documents and outlining the child’s case. Post which the application was forwarded to the administrative home of affairs for further clearances. Now that the case was aforementioned we were able to engage with the government relations team and work closely with administry and have the OCF approved. Much to their relief the OCF was granted and the immigration bumps had been sorted for a long time to come.