[Update1] My passport may be refused by the Dutch embassy!

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Intro for those who missed it

Last week I wrote this post about the news I received from the Dutch embassy, that they want to refuse to give me a new passport due to a passport alert on my data. I was in shock, and mostly frightened about what was going to happen, because this was caused by an debt of 18,5K that should not even be a debt.

Some more info about the so called debt in that letter

So after the first shock and after I had written my post, I had to get myself together because we needed to take action. We thought about it, and we discussed it for hours and hours.. we spoke about it with other people and where we first thought there would be no other option but to make a payment plan, we now have another conclusion. The debt was caused by a year of income called "BBZ-uitkering" in Holland, this means when you're business is in trouble, you can get an amount (about the same as normal welfare) from the government that can help you make your business profitable again. When this is the case after one year, you have to pay this amount back to them, if it's not (so when you have no profit) it's been given as a gift. In our case it was not profitable, the only problem is that we lost our house (plus all our belongings) and that we were not capable of paying the accountant for doing the tax return of the business. And this is what the municipality needed to decide if it would be a gift or loan.

The annoying thing is they are the reason we lost everything

I wrote about it before, that they municipality should have given us a welfare after this year of BBZ payment, but they didn't and after 6 months (while we lost all we had and loved) they approved our appeal on this decision and did not set things right, only the money part. We were too busy to find housing, what was a big big challenge because thanks to them we were also blacklisted, and in the period that they approved the appeal, there were debts because of not paying things for months (how can you pay without an income)and they froze our bank account so we could not access the money on it. Long story short, we thought they would set things right after the appeal being approved, like getting us of the blacklist, helping with a new social house (so not the expensive ones but normal price as the house we lost was a cheap one) and setting things straight around my children. Because thanks to them I was forced to hand them over to the father that would have never happened if we hadn't lost the house. But they didn't help with anything, they even were making our lives harder in many ways.

We got a letter from them with the request to fill in our taxes

So that they would be able to decide if the amount would be a gift or loan, but we told them from the first moment that we weren't able to pay the accountant. We had to find a place to live, as I found out I was pregnant and almost halfway.. I had become pregnant while we still had our house, and all these months (I guess due to the stressful time) I hadn't noticed anything even if it was my 3rd child. But we were open to them from the beginning, my boyfriend took the task on him to communicate with the municipality as it was very stressful for me at the time (because I also had to deal with not seeing my children thanks to their father). He never neglected any letter from them, always jumped right on it, went to the office or called and e-mailed. Always, and we told them from the start that it was quite impossible to get the needed documents as we lost all we had. And now trying to get back on track. We thought (yes, stupid how could we think this) that because of the approved appeal they would be mild on this. But they kept sending that letter. And we kept telling them we had no funds for this.

Then we moved to Spain due to safety reasons

We had been in contact with them there also, and once again explained the situation, the man told us we could still fill in an appeal. But in Spain our situation was not too bright when it came to funds, we had enough to live, but we had no savings. Because I was in sick-law after I fell down the stairs. It took quite a while before I was able to take care of the little girl on my own due to severe pain.. So my boyfriend was not able to apply for a job before around summer time 2017. He did his best, was working on this really hard, to make sure we would be financially better, and I finally had a lot less pain, because I learned to listen to the signals my body gave me. So I was confident he could be working fulltime and I would take care of our daughter. It also helped that she was finally walking, and I wouldn't have to carry her as much anymore, because that was a big impact on my back pain daily. Things would get better from here with the pain, but also financially.

The job he found was in Hungary, a whole new unexpected adventure

But as much as we liked living in Spain, we already knew that moving to another country is not that big of a deal and we were actually pretty excited to start a new adventure. And for my boyfriend this would be great having a job again, to fulfill his passion. For me this would mean I could finally focus more on writing and make this my "job". Not only good for the extra money, but also for the healing part because of everything we have been through, and to prep the case I will start to get my children back to me. Finishing my first book will be easier too as I now have many more hours of practicing my writing skills. It took us a while (about 5 months!) before we settled here in Hungary. Until the moment we finally found our own apartment, we were living with a colleague of my boyfriend, and also had a temporary apartment (way too expensive and we could not register there) and 3 weeks of AirBnB too. All this time we could not get one step further with the official documentation here. My boyfriend was the only one that had a health insurance, tax registration and arranged a bank account for us. But the registration card that we need for getting a health insurance for me and our daughter took such a long time because of this. We have this card since 1 week!

We were like 5 steps behind due to this extra time of settling down here

Now we could finally arrange our health insurance, because my ID card will expire in a little over a week, and this health insurance card here will have the expiration date of your passport/ID card on it, do you see my problem here? My passport application will be on hold for the next 8,5 weeks because of the municipality in Holland, and in that period I will not be able to arrange my health insurance. Because I can not show them a valid ID card/passport. I find this worrying, and I can only HOPE that after this period I get my passport anyway and I will get the health insurance too.

The last week we certainly haven't been sitting still

I made the choice not to write the appeal yet, because it can be send by e-mail and if I would have applied that appeal last week, after this date of that email they would start counting the 8 weeks "on hold" to arrange something with the municipality. In the email it stated that I had 2 weeks to send it to them, so you do the math, if I waited 1,5 weeks + 8 weeks "on hold" I would have 9,5 weeks instead of 8.. Much better.. And I must say we used last week very productively. After some conversations with a colleague that knows some more about tax declarations and the rules, we found out that there is a good chance that we still can make them deduct this amount. As we could not access all our things, and many things got lost, we made a list of things we needed to have for sure. By now I can access the website again where I can do the taxes, my boyfriend also has access to his too. So check. But before we can do this, we need the correct info of course. A little ashamed, my boyfriend searched online for his accountant from back in those days of his business, and after some days he responded, but the best part was: he sent that document we need for the tax declaration! This is great news!

Let's not get too excited yet

We don't want to put ALL our hopes on this document, as there still may be resistance (I expect this due to their past behavior) from the municipality. The tax declaration itself will be fine, I guess. There may even be some advantages as they had filled in a way too high amount of income for us both. I haven't contacted the municipality yet, because my boyfriend had a few days off, and I am a bit hesitating because of sending it from home. Even though there's a TOR network and stuff, I still don't feel confident that they won't do anything with our info if I mail from here, so we decided that we would make a new email address and send all the mails from another location.. Maybe people will not understand and say don't overreact, well if you know what we've been through having no privacy left, you would decide being safe is better than sorry too. The colleague advised us first not to go into the case with the municipality but just email them to ask what the amount is for (as it is not specified and in my opinion it is also 4k higher than it should be) so I want a specification of this. And I want to hear from them that they decided that it's a debt because of the fact we couldn't do the tax declaration. That way we can respond with sending them the actual declaration and once again explain WHY we could not do this earlier.

When they won't accept this

We decided we will need to consult a lawyer as they probably have no choice than to accept this. And I don't want to start making payments that will be useless anyway, because I am not too confident that they will pay them back. But let's see if this will be necessary. I do know, I want to prep the communication properly, and I am gathering information daily to see if I haven't missed anything. If needed I will point out the violation of the basic human rights (see my series of posts last 6 days) wo the lawyer. Maybe it won't help a damn thing, but in Holland there was a lawyer that was confident at that point (back then the part of paying back this amount was not even spoken about yet, the conversation with that lawyer was a few months earlier)that we had a STRONG case against the municipality. So with that in mind, and with the steps we have made last week, I must focus on a positive outcome. And I am not allowing myself to think about what MAY happen, or what they MAY be doing if we won't get to a solution. Because that way I will be effected in a negative way by negative thoughts. So let's try to stay positive.

That having said

I still need to feel in control a bit, because all that things happening to us, where we had totally NO control over, I like to keep things in my own hands, and make sure that I do have a back up plan. So I will keep writing as much as I can here, to gather funds for when the municipality will demand a big sum of money from me. I can't take the risk that I won't have the money when they would demand it, because there is a limited amount of time (a little over 9 weeks now) before the application of the passport will expire. They will only hold this for 8 weeks. And as I don't want to panic in a few weeks, I do my absolute best to gain as much as funds as I can daily. As some of you know I am also filling up the gaps of the salary deduction that we will be having the next months in a row, but I will try to take as little as possible. And until now that is working out pretty well. I'd rather find out in some months, we managed with just a little bit of my earnings, than to have nothing when we absolutely need it. Because for example the health insurance will charge money too, and some of the people here tell us they charge it for a full year (even though you get it in May or something you pay the whole year 2018 unless you have a job ;) )

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So still things to do, but feeling much more confident

Not sure how things will work out, but at least I see solutions now, and let's see where the definite solution will be for us. I am also trying to focus on getting more positive thoughts, and even started to meditate again a few days ago. As I really really don't want to be swept off my feet by negative energy and thoughts of what might happen. The attitude should be: "We have been in much scarier and worse situations, we survived ALL of them, and this will be just another challenge to overcome". I will be just fine, breathe in and breathe out :) I am also trying to focus a bit more on creating things myself lately as I find it so relaxing to create/draw/paint things. A relaxed happy person can accomplish a lot more than a stressed and worried person, right?

I want to thank every person that has been supporting me and my posts here on Steemit. I know some of you may think it's only penny's but it means a lot to me, because a lot of penny's make bigger amounts too ;) And those penny's may be very much needed in the next months in our situation.. So everyone helping me gathering that "back-up" plan for when it may come to that point of them demanding a sum to approve my passport, I am so very grateful! You really have no idea what it means to me.

You are all angels! <3

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AnoukNox

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