Winter in Egypt, 2024 - Extending Our Visas

I previously blogged about the laborious process of extending a tourist visa here in 2009 and again in 2018.   We normally arrive in Cairo without a visa and purchase one for twenty-five dollars at the bank window in the airport immigration area.  That visa is only good for thirty days and there is a penalty for overstaying, but the penalty is waived for visitors over 60 years of age.  When our friends, Aliza and Alan, told us about the penalty waiver, we quit renewing, eliminating a major hassle each year.

But, this year we are dealing with some legal issues (recall that water damage to the ceiling?) and need to have legal status in order to have our lawyer file papers with the court.  So we headed across the Nile to obtain a visa extension.

The good news is that we no longer have to go the Mogamma in Tahrir Square to do this.  The Mogamma is becoming a beautiful hotel (it "could be" finished in 2024)  

 

 The bad news is that the process has not changed much.  Passports are now renewed at the General Administration of Passports, Immigration and Nationality in the Abassiya district.  The building lies just off Salah Salem, the road to the airport.  It is a short walk from the el Abassiya metro station.

The new office has five floors and likely as many "transaction windows" as the old site in the Mogamma.  There is quite a mix of people from around the world applying here and not many appeared to be American.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn that thousands of people pass through the building on any given day.

If I recall the process correctly, it is approximately as follows.  We arrived at about 9:00 A.M. and were directed to take a position in the "European area" line.  Upon reaching the head of the line, we were given a number and told to wait for the number to be called.  Numbers were called fairly rapidly; at our turn, the process was explained by an English-speaking clerk.  We would need to have a receipt for an exchange of $70.00 in U.S. currency from a bank - it could not be from one of the banks represented in the building and also not from an ATM.  With that in hand we would be able to go to another window and pay the necessary fee in Egyptian currency (about $70 worth.)  It was suggested that we could take care of that the next day and then it would take two more days to process our extension.

We headed out to a low-traffic Bank of Egypt office and got a number to change money in person.

 

With two receipts from the bank, we headed back to the passport office.  We returned to the same clerk as in the morning (it was now about 2 P.M.) who immediately gave us a number and told us to have a seat.

 

Numbers were called at a very slow pace as the one clerk had to handle a multitude of inquiries in between numbered clients!  At about 4 P.M. our number came up.  An invoice was prepared showing four charges amongst twenty-eight possibilities and we were approved to pay it at the bank window about ten feet away.

 

With our fee paid, we returned to the clerk's window who assigned us to a different window where we were photographed and fingerprinted.  Somewhere in this process we were given the familiar four-page immigration form where we declare our residence, religion and other vital information.  Back in the Mogamma days, this form was available in a large stack at the entrance to the area and all visitors told each other, "you'll need this, filled out."

At the end of the fingerprinting, we were told to come back in two days, before 9 A.M. and we would be able to pick up our visas after 4 P.M.

Two days later we arrived well before 9 A.M. and were given a number and told to have a seat.  This was another slow moving line.  By about 11 A.M. our number was called.  

 

We gave up our passports to a clerk who flipped through a foot deep stack of paperwork and found our forms, matched them to the passports and applied ticket number 82 to the paper.  He then handed us a second copy of ticket number 82.  We were to return to a different window after 4 P.M.  During the time between 9 and 11 we met a young Welsh man who has been living and working here for several years.  He has to go through this every six months to renew his residency.

We took a taxi back the condo and then an Uber back to the passport office arriving around 3 P.M.  A security man spotted us waiting and took our "82,"  found our passports with extended Visa stamps and handed us our six month residency cards!

Are there any advantages to the new location? Yes.

1. There are escalators between floors.
2. There are plenty of chairs to sit on.
3. There is no mob scene at the end as passports are distributed, with a clerk yelling, "Mr. Amerika!"

If you think your picture taken at the DMV in Minnesota looks bad, just wait until you get one of these:

 

If anyone would like an explanation of the fees and mandatory currency exchange in dollars involved, there is an English language sign at the head of the escalator leading out of the passport building.

We can now stay until mid-August.