FRRO Made Easier

Our group was fortunate to not encounter too much red tape at the FRRO.  And when I went back the second time, to update my place of residence after settling on an apartment, I was in and out in less than one hour.

But it gets even better.  Beginning from the first week of August 2011 onward, registration and visa extension forms will only be accepted online for the Delhi FRRO Office, which should make the process less stressful yet.  (However, you may still have to physically go to the office if your residential address changes - not sure about that one.)

For more information, see the Indian Bureau of Immigration's website.

Registration at the FRRO

That stands for Foreigner Regional Registration Offices.  Anyone staying in India on an Entry visa for longer than six months is required to register at the FRRO in the region where they are staying (ours was Delhi).  Last year's ETA's blogged horror stories about their FRRO experience, so I was pleasantly surprised with how smoothly the process went for us this year.

Fortunately we had an Indian citizen, who works part-time for Fulbright, assisting us with the process (e.g. making enough copies of certain documents, putting documents in the proper order, etc.).  He was also kind enough to put all ten of our names on a queue list at 6 AM this morning so that our applications would be processed first when the Office opened at 9:30 AM.

Thankfully these preparations allowed us to bypass much of the chaos that would have ensued otherwise.  Despite some expected confusions (we are in India), the process wasn't bad at all.  It ended up taking only 1.5 hours for all 10 of us to get registered.

Abby was number 10.  And just as Abby finally convinced the official that, yes, although she was born in Tokyo she is still an American citizen by birth because her parents are American citizens, the power went out.  Fortunately all she had left to do was get a final signature, which happened within minutes.  Thank goodness it waited till we were finished!