Vanuatu passports by 15 August: how a family made the school deadline

A family from Tyumen and a letter from the school

This is a composite example: the story is built from typical family enquiries, no real client is described and the names are invented. Stanislav is 40, his wife Inna 37, their son Zakhar 10, their daughter Milana 7. All are Russian citizens.

Stanislav runs projects for an oilfield services company and has worked in Dubai for two years. Inna taught music and now looks after the children while preparing for an English exam.

The family left Tyumen two years ago, keeping their flat there and letting it. Inna flies to Russia every quarter to see her parents and the children spend summers with their grandmother, so everyone’s Russian documents are current and renewed on time.

Choosing the school took six months: programmes, open days, entrance tests. Zakhar was accepted, and the school sent a letter with a list of documents and a date.

Zakhar sat maths and English tests; Milana had her interview in a playroom. Inna worried about her son’s English, and he scored highest in his group and immediately asked whether the new school had a pool.

The children had Russian passports, but the family wanted a second document: the father’s work status is renewed every year, and the school, the medical insurance and the tenancy all hang on it.

The family had been through this the previous spring: the father’s work status renewal slipped by three weeks and Milana’s school asked for proof of status by the end of the month. It ended well, but the aftertaste stayed, and it was what started the conversation about a second passport.

Everything here was counted not from the budget or the country but from a single date in a letter from a school.

Martina VeberHead of Case Processing

How the timing was worked out from the date

The lawyer started from the end. The passports must be in hand by 15 August. So approval has to come by mid-July, because biometrics, the online oath and passport printing follow it.

He did the first calculation during the call, on a sheet of paper: seven lines, seven deadlines. Then he sent it as a table where every document carried two dates - when it is ordered and when it must be in hand.

Before approval come filing and due diligence, about a month. Before filing comes the full document pack for four people, and the bottleneck there is not our forms but the certificates that state bodies issue on their own schedules.

The lawyer also warned about the May holidays: in early May Russian offices work in fits and starts, and any document ordered in late April easily loses a week. So every order went in during the first half of April.

The longest of those is the police certificate: up to thirty days. It was ordered on day one, before the contract was even signed, so that its clock ran alongside everything else.

Second longest was the apostille: it goes on Russian-issued documents, and the office’s workload changes from month to month. In April it took nine days; in June it might have taken three weeks, so documents were sent off immediately, in batches.

They also agreed what to do if the timing slipped after all. The plan: the school accepts the documents on the Russian passports and the father’s renewed status, with the Vanuatu passports following later. The family never needed the fallback, but it was written down from day one.

The two-week margin was deliberate: for post, for the courier and for any document that has to be redone.

What fitted the timing and what could have broken it

For four people we gathered passports, the children’s birth certificates, the marriage certificate, police certificates for the adults, medical certificates, proof of address, income documents and photographs to specification.

The application forms, passport forms and reference letters were prepared by our team. In the whole process Stanislav filled in one table with the family’s details and signed the finished documents when he flew to Tyumen for a weekend.

Children do not need police certificates: those are required from 18. That removed two documents and several weeks of waiting.

The risk lay in the daughter’s birth certificate: issued in Tyumen in 2019 with an error in the mother’s patronymic. Our lawyer spotted it during the check rather than due diligence after filing. The registry office reissued it in nine days.

The second risk was Stanislav’s own travel passport, which expired in December. Formally that was enough, but the lawyer asked him to replace it in advance so that every document would match the new passport rather than the old one.

We ordered apostilles and certified translations ourselves, in batches: as soon as a document appeared it went straight into the queue, without waiting for the full set.

Translations followed the passport spellings from the start: Zakhar and Milana are written with Z and M in their travel passports, and every document was brought into line with that. A single letter out of step drags the whole set into a redo.

Why they chose the donation

For a family of four the donation is USD 185,000 including the due diligence fee. The coconut oil fund costs 165,000 for a family of up to four, with 50,000 returned after five years.

On money the fund is better for such a family. But the fund is paid at filing and the donation after approval. With a hard deadline those are different things: had the application slipped, the family’s money would already be inside the programme.

Inna argued for the fund at first: USD 20,000 of difference plus 50,000 returned after five years looked persuasive. One question from the lawyer settled it - what would the family do if the application slipped by a month with the money already paid in. After that they chose the donation.

Stanislav chose the donation deliberately, treating the difference as the price of peace of mind. How the two programmes work is set out in donation or fund.

Filing in June and one question from due diligence

The application was filed in the first days of June, a week ahead of plan: the police certificate came back in under thirty days.

Before filing, the lawyer sent the family the full pack to proofread: names in Latin letters, dates, addresses, the order of attachments. No errors turned up, but Inna noticed that one document gave the street without the building number, and that was fixed within the hour.

Only the main applicant went through due diligence. One question came: confirm two years of income, because part of Stanislav’s salary is paid in the Emirates. We attached his employment contract, account statements and an employer’s letter.

Inna joined the application as the spouse and the children as minors. Neither the spouse nor the children go through due diligence, which noticeably shortens the family’s document list.

Approval arrived in the first days of July. The family gave biometrics in Dubai, where they live, and took the oath online by video in a single evening.

Biometrics in Dubai were booked for a Saturday morning so the children would not miss camp. Milana feared it would be like a doctor’s appointment and relaxed when she saw the whole thing takes five minutes.

The passports were couriered on 30 July. Two weeks remained before the school’s date, and the documents went to the school without any rush.

The whole family tracked the courier: the parcel travelled from Port Vila via Dubai, and Zakhar checked the tracking number on his father’s phone every day. On delivery day he opened the envelope first and found his own passport by the photograph.

The documents went to the school on 1 August, two weeks before the deadline. The reply came the next day: the place is confirmed, and the child is expected to meet his form teacher on 25 August.

How it ended for the family

In this scenario the Vanuatu Commission approved the application and the passports arrived before the school’s date. In a real application the decision and the timing rest with the Vanuatu Citizenship Commission.

Zakhar started school in September; Milana joins the same school’s reception class next year.

Everyone kept their Russian citizenship: Russia allows a second one. The parents notified the Interior Ministry within 30 days of their next trip to Russia and filed the notices for the children themselves.

The father’s work status has not gone anywhere, but the whole family’s entry no longer depends on it: everyone holds a second document.

A Vanuatu passport is issued for 10 years and then replaced, while the citizenship remains indefinite. The lawyer set the family a reminder a year before expiry.

When there is a date, you count backwards from it and start with the document that takes longest to issue.

Martina VeberHead of Case Processing

The first school year and what changed for the family

The lawyer warned about the school’s own requirements in advance: international schools ask not only for the child’s document but for proof of the family’s address, a medical record with vaccinations and last year’s report card with a translation. The family gathered that list alongside the programme, without waiting for the passports.

Zakhar started school on 1 September in a class of seventeen taught in English, with Arabic as a second language. For the first two weeks he complained about the heat on the way there, then got used to it.

For the school the second passport makes no difference: children are admitted on documents and tests. For the family it means the children’s status no longer depends on the father’s work contract.

Inna applied for English courses at a university, and the second passport helped with a small everyday thing: the course form accepts any valid document, so she enrolled without waiting for a status renewal.

Milana is in the reception group at the same school this year. The school held her place on condition that the elder child was enrolled, which was another reason not to miss the August date.

The family recalculated their travel as well. Vanuatu citizens enter Hong Kong and Singapore without a visa, and the children spent the autumn break in Singapore, where Inna’s sister lives.

The lawyer reminded them of two dates: the Interior Ministry notice and passport replacement in ten years. Both sit in the family calendar with a month’s warning.

A second passport does not solve the school question. It removes the dependence of school, tenancy and insurance on a single work status.

Martina VeberHead of Case Processing

Who this route suits

Families with a hard date: the start of a school year, a deal, a move, a work status renewal.

Anyone timing this for the first time: the bottleneck is usually not the application but the certificates issued on official schedules.

Anyone whose documents were issued in different cities and years: errors in names and patronymics are found before filing, not after.

Similar stories: a Singapore deal on 20 January and a family of four moving to Asia. Programme terms are on the Vanuatu citizenship page.

Composite example: the story is built from typical enquiries and no real clients are described. Figures as of September 2026. The decision rests with the Vanuatu Citizenship Commission.