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2023-07-29 04:00:00
Great relief for Edwin. After four years of waiting, this resident of Flemish Brabant will be able to live with his wife in Belgium. The Foreigners Office recently granted a visa to his companion in the context of family reunification. To obtain this result, this couple had to show great patience. The sexagenarian tells us his unusual story.
After a few exchanges on a dating site, Edwin saw his wife Tennat for the first time on April 21, 2019, during a wedding in Belgium. “We met in a small Thai temple in Waterloo, on a Sunday morning. It was the first time she had come to Belgium to attend her sister’s wedding.” Between Edwin and Tennat, it’s love at first sight.
15 days later, she had to return to Thailand, and the young couple maintained their relationship at a distance. “We started exchanging messages via Whatsapp and Messenger every day”, says Edwin.
“Pretty quickly”, the employee of a company specializing in homeopathic preparations introduced visa application for marriage with his municipality.
“But she opposed this visa. I met the judge twice. A first sentence was unfavorable to us. A lawyer advised me to lodge an appeal and the second appeal was also canceled, 18 months following our meeting. There were various points which were disputed. The reason which remained, it is that the approach was introduced too quickly. Even if we proved our good faith, we might not find an agreement. The process was done quickly, but we get on well. I thought we were going to start early given the length of the process. And if the relationship didn’t work out, I would have said we don’t stop everything.”
Then, the health crisis linked to Covid prevented the couple from seeing each other once more for several months. “We also had to go through this stage. For more than a year, it was impossible to go to Thailand. The visa was very difficult to obtain to travel. There were many conditions to be fulfilled. The relationship has always held. We contacted each other 3 to 4 times a day. We sent each other messages and videos.”
In 2022, they submitted a new application for a visa allowing Tennat to stay in Belgium. A request once more refused. “When I met her, she had a hairdressing salon there. To be able to come to Belgium, she handed over her business in 2019, and she did not resume the activity because she thought she might live here”says Edwin. “They rejected us for a simple ‘visit’ visa. They did not accept that I am the one supporting her when I have no money problem. doesn’t have any more income. But she wasn’t going to reopen a salon thinking she was coming. It’s been a lot of months and years going by so we never really tried to find a job for her because we thought she might get here.”
Finding no solution in Belgium, Edwin tried his luck in Thailand. On December 14, 2022, the two lovebirds got married in Chonburi (a city located in the east of the country) and planned to live there.
“We applied for a long-stay visa, as part of a family reunification, but the Thai administration is also very complicated. You have to run for a lot of things. The last 25 days I spent there- low, I spent 10 days running to do the papers. A lot of steps and it’s expensive.”
Retired in two years, in May 2025, Edwin therefore had the project of going to live in Thailand but there too, the file was therefore “too complicated” to complete. “The pile of our file is 30 centimeters high with all the papers provided. We must legalize the translations. For people who are not tenacious, I strongly advise once morest it. It’s quite tedious. It takes a lot of time and effort. energy. We would simply like to live together. We have proof, I have the financial means. I don’t see where the problem is. It’s the administrations that are blocking. We can contact foreign affairs, but we are told: we need 6 month.”
On January 6, an application for a long-stay visa in the context of family reunification was submitted. And on May 12, the Foreigners Office in Belgium took a favorable decision allowing the couple to live together.
“A visa has been issued and my wife arrived in Belgium on July 2. It is a visa valid for one year. We are relieved but there are still unknowns.”
“I had not seen her since December 23, 2022”, rejoiced Edwin. “He’s a beautiful person. We get on well and we want to live together. The distance was complicated to manage. During the Covid, we didn’t see each other for 13 or 14 months. When we receive bad news and that we communicate them, it was not easy to do it by message. We had a lot of problems and it’s difficult to live. 4 years of waiting in the end… I don’t think that many people go further. They would give up. I held on because there is the person and the project. It’s a new life. It adds the desire to do things well and to move forward”he concludes.
>READ: Application for family reunification: how does it work?
For its part, the Immigration Office might not comment on the progress of this file. “Indeed, in accordance with the legislation in force in relation to privacy, the publicity of the administration and the protection of personal data, the Immigration Office cannot communicate to third parties information concerning individual cases. Each case is unique and is the subject of an in-depth examination”said spokeswoman Dominique Ernould.
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