I am sure each and everyone who tried applying or actually applied for an Armenian citizenship have gone through several stages of disappointment and rage…

It’s an amazing experience of running around with a stack of papers to several government agencies that have no clue what they ought to do and where you should apply for yet another piece of paper or a statement that does not make sense to begin with… you gotta have a serious amount of patience and almost twice as much time to get to the end of this long process.

You gotta spend at least several days in OVIR (the passports and visa department of the Armenian police), trying to find out how and where should yo go. The offices do not have descriptions only name plates, you get in and you see a lot of doors with Mr. X….yan on the door, what exactly he or she does, what are the departments and the divisions… God knows. The simple thing is to ask and then you get an answer with an attitude as if you already owe them big time.

After finding out where you should go and who you should talk to you get a list of different papers that you should bring in order to start the application process. Several documents like a statement about employment
in Armenia have to be issued by various entities in Armenia. Forget about the idea why on earth do they need me to bring it myself, isn’t there a database they can connect to and find out in several minutes if I am paying taxes here or not. They send you to ZHEK (the remnant of soviet legacy, sort of like building or district administration that deals with collecting the fees for the garbage pick ups, building clean ups, etc.). You go to ZHEK and an old lady that has no clue what exactly you want sends you to another government agency, where you are told that you should go to State department for labor and social services. Another old lady there looks at you and asks do we do this?! Yes. Of course you do. You can check the database and check if I paid the social security tax, right? Oh, right. Leave us your contacts and call us in four days. You would think they would do something in four days. After four days you call them and they send you back to ZHEK ))) The familiar old lady at ZHEK looks at you and takes a piece of paper and writes that you came in to ZHEK and said that you are not working and she certifies that. With the same success she could certify that I am the superman or James Bond.

After similar ridiculous rounds with other agencies you are finally set to go back to OVIR and finally give the papers and get done with it.

In OVIR a lady looks through all the papers makes you go to the neighboring xerox place and copy everything and then asks you to proove that you are in fact Armenian. I speak Armenian, my last name ends with ian and my parents’ last names are in ian I also happen to have my certificate that I was baptized in an Armenian church, but all that does not count. She says may be you are not Armenian. Could you please tell me what should i do to prove, a DNA test?!

After long fight they finally take the documents conduct a test on the knowledge of Armenian constitution and language and let me go promising to get back to me in a year