I sincerely feel sad for what Mr.Parekh has undergone.

He paid the price for not doing enough home work before an important travel with the family. We can't really blame much the immigration official in India.

I thank Parekh for sharing his experience so that we will be extra careful whenever we make a travel.

how dare the immigration turn the poor fellow back all the way to USA! DID Mr Parekh not get a chance for a hearing?? This is pure technical issue after all he is not a burden on Indian society but as NRI he brings dollars which he earns in usa and invests in india...IS THIS THE TREATMENT OCI GETS????????

Here is my piece to add to this..

I have a cdn passport and a PIO card . We flew to India on Apr 8th from Seattle via KLM . At Amsterdam airport they did not let me board the flight to India as I

1) was not carrying the original Indian expired passport that was mentioned on my PIO card
2) My new cdn passport was not endorsed on the PIO card

My wife and daughter had valid visas to India and they were good to go to India but they decided to stick with me and try and get the PIO corrected. We were offloaded at Amsterdam and since it was a Saturday, the Indian consulate was closed and we were to wait till Monday to go to the Indian Consulate at Hague to get this corrected. It was a shock and embarrassment to have undergone this .

Well Since we did not need visas to get out at Amsterdam it was easy to do this. We moved into a hotel and rested for about 2 days and then on Monday we went to the Indian consulate at Hague.They were really friendly and told me that they cannot "endorse" my new cdn passport on my PIO as they did not have the authority to do so but can give me a 3 month single entry visa to India so that we can complete our vacation and then I can go back to Vancouver consulate and take care of this later. Well I had my cdn passport with Indian visa in 15 minutes and we re-booked our flight to India the next day .

So after a harrowing and an eventful experience involving a 3 day India trip delay and $1200 extra for the trip, We are in India and had a forced vacation in Amsterdam ..At the end of it all, We had the opportunity to see Amsterdam and had a good time although it was really tense ...

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We will find a way or we will make one

Hi Smiley, I am confused after reading your post. In your post you have mentioned that

"1) was not carrying the original Indian expired passport that was mentioned on my PIO card"

I think here it should be expired Canadian passport as in POI there is no mention of India passport number.


Correct me if I am wrong

They had put my Indian passport number by mistake so I had been carrying it for the last 2 trips. They should have put the canadian one ..

I need to get that corrected and the new canadian ones endorsed ...

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We will find a way or we will make one

Agree with u totally...

Sometime people take things for granted and then face consequences..
Dual citizenship has many issues even between USA and canada, this where u need to tread with care..

Quote:

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Originally posted by DesiBabu70

this is indeed very sad what happened to Mr. Parekh and i'm happy that he has not given up the matter and duly following it up and raising a ruckus about it with the Indian authorities.
this just goes to show what self serving some Indian officials are with a bloated sense of their own importance.

however there is also a lesson in here for all of us.

see, the Indian officials esp. those in position of power like immigration, customs and police officials, are what is called in classical Hindi lakeer ke fakir i.e. they always do things rigidly by the book and never use common sense to see right from wrong.

it is never a good idea to tempt these officials with unusual set of documents or paperwork.

see, what Mr. Parekh was doing was clearly unusual and he should have anticipated some trouble by the Indian officials.
he is a dual US-Canadian citizen and thus has two passports.
However his OCI stamp is on an expired Canadian passport and he's using a US passport to enter India.
The OCI was originally issued in Canada on the Canadian passport, which has since expired and not been renewed.

It is technically possible that the Canadian citizenship is not valid any more, but the Indian official would not be able to verify that.

The case from the perspective of the Indian official is not crystal clear beyond any shadow of doubt.

doing something a little out of ordinary with Indian officials is asking for trouble.

the sad part is that Mr. Parekh could have done some very simple things before his trip to cover all bases and ensure that everything is kosher and clear.
He could very easily have renewed his Canadian passport in the US for a very nominal fee.
Alternatively, he could have applied for the U visa sticker on his US passport at an Indian consulate in the US.

Any of these things would have avoided this problem.

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