Flying Out Of Argentina With Kids If They Have Dnis

[wongjoh]

Here's me hoping others can benefit from our hell experience tonight.

Summary = if your spouse and you leave Argentina with your children and they have DNIs (even if temporary), you need to bring their birth certificates (apostilled and translated by the local notaries) to be let out of the country

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Long story = My wife and I are at EZE with our children and during airport check-in, they ask us for the "libreta familiar" and I say "what?". It turns out that even though we are foreigners with american passports, due to the fact that we are temporary Argentinian residents (with issued temporary DNIs), we need to show them proof that our children are indeed ours. This even when our kids passports show they bear the same last names as us, even when they can be asked directly if we are their parents, even when my kids look like my wife and I (we're chinese too!), even when nowhere else in the world we have been asked for this upon leaving the country when both father and mother are also present, and even when nobody -- including the airline -- ever told us we had to bring such documents.

So they send us to Immigration to have them sort this out. Immigration says that because we have the DNI, we are considered to be Argentinian and we must follow Argentinian requirements for minors to leave the country. Immigration will only let us through if the airport DNI center will provide a printout saying that our kids's parents are us.

So we head over to the airport DNI center to ask for the printout, to which they say "No, you are not Argentinian; we do not help foreigners". Even though I explain the situation, they continue to say that they do not have data/info on foreigners (which is hard to believe otherwise how would we have gotten our DNIs in the first place). But hey, I realize I was already swimming against the current then.

So, we lost the flight and now have to reschedule everything. To add insult to injury, the airline is charging us a change fee per person, plus the rate difference. All because the Argentinian immigration department does not bother to put the parent's names in the entry for every DNI-registered person, like in other countries!

We've lived in many countries (Mexico, USA, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Ecuador) and traveled to many more and never, ever heard about birth certificates for kids when both father and mother are also traveling with them.

I don't know whether to be angry or to cry.

Thanks for reading about my qualm. Hope it helps others prevent this same experience.

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[EdRooney]

Thanks for posting this and I'm really sorry you had to go through such an awful experience.

As with many bureaucracies, Argentine immigrations can be downright dreadful when it comes to coordinating requirements internally, and they are never clear about what documents will be needed in a given situation, especially when it comes to foreigners. There is no excuse for this ineptitude.

One point to make in their favour though is that Argentina has put a lot of these controls into place in order to prevent human trafficking (particularly given its awful record under the last dictatorship). In this regard the country has made huge leaps forward in preventing children from being misappropriated. Nevertheless it's a travesty that they can't get their act together in clearly specifying the requirements for each case, which would have obviously saved you from having to go through this nightmare.

Either way, thanks for taking the time to put it up here so we all have a heads up.

 

[gpop]

Similar thing happened to us from EZE to AZS. Our daughter was born here though. Still had to prove that we (Canadian father, Argentine mother) were the parents. At first, were were livid; then thinking about it, we understood their point. Just having the same surname does not prove anything. Could be some crazy estranged family member, could be someone with the same surname running a scam; I get why the do this kind of checking and I think it is necessary.

With only 1 and half hours to departure. I waited in the airport with my daughter and (still unchecked) luggage; while my wife took a very fast (and very expensive ride back to our home in Villa del Parque) and back again with the proper papers.
Birth certificate and Libreta (the red book) as well as DNI and Passport which we had with us to begin with.
We cleared security finally and boarded by the skin our teeth.

What I have issue with is that neither the airline, nor the travel agent gives you a heads-up about WHAT the proper documentation is supposed to be. They really should have a flag that alerts the parents of young children about this AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE... I guess their too busy alerting you of all the extra charges they tagged onto to your bill to be bothered.

In your case it is a bit different, but still; I think that they dropped the ball insofar as the BS they presented you with at the airport DNI center.

 

[ghost]

Sorry ....I've been down this very same road and it really , really amps up the "I hate Argentina" level. But the next night you go back to the airport with all of the proper docs and nobody asks for anything as you skate through a smooth exit. It really sucks. Uniformity does not exist.

 

[fifs2]

Sorry this happened to you. It must have been v upsetting for the whole family. Sadly this has been always been the expat requirement as I posted some years ago. I got lucky as our first trip was to Uruguay on Buquebus and due to a kind official or my floods of tears we were allowed to travel anyhow. Thereafter and whether folly or not we travelled with every single piece of official documentation inc a copy of bills proof of residence from the police you name it. We have been asked for this every single exit we made so if its any comfort what happened to you wasnt personal.
I totally agree that this requirement should be flagged somewhere. Our buquebus agent carefully instructed us on getting our windows engraved with the vin number before travelling or wevwouldnt have been able to take the car but nothing on the documentation requirement. Baffling! Chin up. The good news is this cant happen to you again and youve been a good citizen warning others.

 

[Nicole_Ramirez]

Sorry to hear that. It breaks my heart. The exact thing happened to us 3 years ago and I posted about it to warn people. Our problem was that we live in Bariloche, so the birth certificates were very far away. We got lucky the next day when a nicer person came on shift and said they would accept a faxed copy from the police station if our friend would go there to fax it. The sad thing is the day before we left we went into immigration to make sure we had everything we needed and they never mentioned birth certificates. Only said we needed out passports. It's a hard lesson to learn. Spend a lot of money to get there and your vacation is shortened and ruined from all the stress.

 

[ghost]

Sorry to hear that. It breaks my heart. The exact thing happened to us 3 years ago and I posted about it to warn people. Our problem was that we live in Bariloche, so the birth certificates were very far away. We got lucky the next day when a nicer person came on shift and said they would accept a faxed copy from the police station if our friend would go there to fax it. The sad thing is the day before we left we went into immigration to make sure we had everything we needed and they never mentioned birth certificates. Only said we needed out passports. It's a hard lesson to learn. Spend a lot of money to get there and your vacation is shortened and ruined from all the stress.

Yes but none of the assholes in immigration have ever figured out that a birth certificate is a prerequisite for getting a passport. And then you add special letters and additional proofs of proofs compounded by more proofs and pretty soon you can be assured that a typo will show up somewhere around the fourth or fifth time you use the same documents.

 

[Nicole_Ramirez]

Yes but none of the assholes in immigration have ever figured out that a birth certificate is a prerequisite for getting a passport. And then you add special letters and additional proofs of proofs compounded by more proofs and pretty soon you can be assured that a typo will show up somewhere around the fourth or fifth time you use the same documents.

That has been my agreement all along.. but my husband just stares at me like just stop debating it cause it's not gonna change. So annoying. The last trip we made we brought more paperwork than needed so nothing could go wrong.

 

[nativexpat]

So sorry to hear that! Such distress...

Something similar happened to us (I only took my children's Spanish passports )... we were lucky that it was 5 am when we arrived at the airport and that our 8 am flight got delayed for 3 hours. I had time to catch a cab, speed through the empty city, get our Libreta de Familia and make it back in 1 hour...

 

[ben]

What I have issue with is that neither the airline, nor the travel agent gives you a heads-up about WHAT the proper documentation is supposed to be. They really should have a flag that alerts the parents of young children about this AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE... I guess their too busy alerting you of all the extra charges they tagged onto to your bill to be bothered.

A heartbreaking experience, to be sure, and my deepest sympathies to the OP. I would, however, quibble with the above quote.

Neither the airline nor even the travel agent can a) be completely proficient in immigration law, nor b ) be thoroughly conversant in the immigration status/documents of the travelers. While the OP's experience was horrible, his is enough of an 'edge case' that a normal agent simply cannot necessarily assume to know the rules without having prior experience even if directly asked, and certainly can't be expected to grill every client of theirs when purchasing a ticket, as to whether they might be foreigners who have local children. It just doesn't make sense.

As a travel agent, I've helped/saved a lot of people with documents, advice and the like, and am very happy to be able to learn of this case and help my clients with this new knowledge, but certainly would not agree to have it held against me had I not warned the OP of his issues, having first ascertained their residency status as well as that of their children.