visa issues for New Zealand national living in Canada

You don't need to use that agency for that authorisation number. All the consulate cares about is that you have a valid number to proceed with issuing the visa. All the immigration officer at the airport cares about is that you have a valid visa.

Also, you don't want to be applying for a visa in the lead up to or during Nowruz. The MFA staff stop working well before the official holiday period.

Separate the issues. Tell your travel agency that you will arrange your own visa, and instead spend your time worrying whether that agency can deliver the promised tour. Perhaps abandon the tour. Travel within Iran is cheap and easy to arrange, although you will compete with Iranians for hotel rooms and seats on transport during Nowruz.

Don't wait until March to get this process started. Apply for the authorisation number via another agency three to four months before arrival. The code is valid for one month. Depending on the issuing consulate, you can get the visa within one hour or one week. The visa itself is valid for entry for the three months following issue.

I have a Kiwi passport. Got a visa approval number beforehand through a travel agency, and got and paid for the actual visa on arrival. My friend, also Kiwi passport, went to Mashhad, and got his no worries at the airport without any pre-approval.

We are kiwis and have applied (in NZ) for visas. We didn't get any travel agency involved or an authorisation number - that was fine with the consulate here, they told us it will just take a wee bit longer to process, but we have been told we should have it within a month. Fingers crossed! Good luck with your predicament

With your time constraint, select the Washington DC Iranian interests section office. You then send your passport by fedex and they will fedex it back to you. I'm American and everything went smoothly, they process visa for multiple nationalities and they have been very quick at issuing visas once the authorization number is received. My paperwork for an authorization code went in on February 2 and I had a code by March 17 and dropped my passport off in DC (I was in town for work so convenient). Three business days later my visa was issued.

So you had a code by march 17, which is around the time they are saying I will have a code. Wouldn't you have encountered nowruz? It is very unusual that the Iranian Interest section would be willing to process a visa for you anywhere close to Nowruz. And I would need to post my passport too. How did you manage that?

Sorry-I had code by March 17 and the visa a few days later. I departed the U.S. on April 30. The authorization was issued just before MFA went to Nowruz holiday, the DC Iranian Interests office was only closed for two days around the holiday-they don't take the entire holiday off. The timing is based on when your tour starts-the tour agency can only submit the visa application a certain number of days in advance, think it is around 90 days prior.

What do you mean you would need your passport? You can mail it and I would expect you to have it back within five days. They only mail it back to you via Fedex and you must include the fee for that with a money order than you send in with your passport (ask about the fee to Canada). The Iranian interests section is very responsive to emails-give them 2-3 days to respond. I also called but it is hard to get through. There is no need to go to DC in person, I just happened to get the email with the authorization code and was flying to DC the next day for work so decided to drop it off myself.

You might want to check out the Trip Advisor Forum for additional information.

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