Aliens in Kenya

One of the requirements for extending our initial visas past 90 days is the requirement that you register as an alien in the country and receive an ID card. This is clearly stated on all forms and guidebooks so M and I set out to apply for alien status in late September. We clearly remember the date because while we were in Mombasa, our totally adorable nephew was born (completely unnecessary picture of him below; let’s all say “awwww” together).



After fingerprinting and headshots, our applications were ready to go. We were told that it would take 8 weeks to receive the passes so to check back in late November. The upside of these passes is that theoretically, you can receive entry into some national parks and other attractions for a lower residents price, plus you’re following the law which is a definite perk. We were pleased that we would receive the cards prior to our trip in early December because we wanted to visit several premium parks. We were so naive.

Of course when we called in late November, they were not yet ready. In fact they had not even come down from Nairobi yet. The story was similar in mid-December. In late December, they had been printed but not yet shipped. We finally received our cards January 15th. They expire in early February. Perfect.



When we applied back in September, our current visas expired in early February so it makes sense that they expire when they believed our visas to end. The issue now is that we’ve got visas until May 23rd when we head home but now our alien registration cards are out of date. So, today we took a little field trip to immigration as a side project from M buying reagents for his experiments.

We explained our predicament to the very nice immigration lady who promptly whipped out the alien registration form and began filling it out with our information. We explained to her that with all due respect, any new cards were certainly not going to be here before our old ones expire and that we may have already left the country when new ones arrived. She explained that they only process them in batches of 2,500 so we must have caught them at a bad time. We asked what she thought we should do about it. She smiled and indicated that we shouldn’t really worry about it since our visas were valid. Again, we insisted and held up the form indicating the Kenyan law that we have these cards, we understand that it might not “be a big deal” but we’d like to stay in compliance with Kenyan law. She just reiterated to reapply and sent us to a new clerk.

The new clerk was no more helpful but said that we could use the receipts she was giving us as proof that we had reapplied within the proper timing. We’re not sure if that would work but we’re not really planning on doing anything that draws attention to ourselves anyway and it is true that we have valid visas. It really does highlight the uneven way that things operate in Kenya. They have completely modern immigration requirements of fees, visas, and alien registrations but no ability to effectively process these items when people apply. The immigration lady actually seemed amused that we so fervently wanted to follow the law. Pole pole