Getting a new 90 day tourist visa.

[steveinbsas]

My tourist visa for Argentina (90 days) will expire very soon. Is is true I can go to Colonia (UR) and return to BsAs the same day to obtain a new 90 day visa? (USA passport)?

 

[Elpanada]

Hi If I am not mistaken then Anybody can get one! ninety day extension once for 100 pesos without leaving the country or doing anything of the sort. The place to do this at is close to retiro and it's called Immigration something something (nice name don't you think?). I think that it is true that you can go outside of Argentina and do that as many times as you want but I don't know mate why not just pay the 20$ fine at the airport when you leave in 3 years or whenever you are leaving instead of doing that constant traveling bs? Even if you were to do that(live here 3 years "illegaly" and pay that little fine upon leaving the country) I think that they'd let you back in the next day without asking any questions. Best of luck

 

[sivan]

hey
def true that you can go to uruguay for the day.
ive been living here for over 1 year and a half and what i have been doing is every 3 months i go to immegration and get the new stamp and than 3 months after that go to uruguay. the immegration department is on avenida antartida argentina. in the guia its on page 17 in plan D1 called Direccion nacional de migraciones. you can get the stamp more than once (ive had it done 3 times). it takes about 1 hour in total max! they dont ask any questions except for your address. make sure you go BEFORE your visa expires. if its even on day over they will tell you you have to go to uruguay. from what i understand the fine for an expired visa is 50 pesos. you could just let it expire but i wanted to stay as legal as possible so that when i applied for my permanant residency i wouldnt have any problems.
good luck!

 

[BikiniGirl]

Hi all,
My foreign friends do that all the time, they go to Colonia in Uruguay and come back the following day. It always seemed to work.
Good luck!

 

[sapphos]

you can only go to renew your tourist visa in the country other time. the opposite time you must leave the country even if it's just for the afternoon. Although you can stay in the country ilegally with an expired passport, why do that and risk problems when this country makes it so easy to stay legal. better to stay on top of things rather than ask for problems...that's just my personal feeling, but it doesn't mean it's the right or only way.

 

[Elpanada]

I think that you're mistaken bjrutledge, if you have a stamp in your passport that says that you're allowed to stay in the country until a certain date then I don't think that it can be argued that you're illegaly in the country until after that date. So if you recieve another stamp after that date that says that you are legally in the country until yet another date then the first stamp is simply irrelevant."Just because a law is not enforced doesn't mean that the law doesn't
exist, or that it might not be enforced in the future. Whether you can
get away with something is a separate issue from whether that something
is legal or not."

Well the laws exist that is an undisputed fact but it is the job of immigration officers to enforce it, when they decide not to and decide instead to stamp your passport with a stamp that says that you can legally stay in the country for 90 days then you can legally stay in it for those 90 days.
The way I see it people should really not be bothering with all these visa worries, I strongly doubt that having been illegaly in the country for some period of time will have any negative consequences.

 

[igor]

I know of people who were given a major hassle on reentry after overstaying their visa or going to Uruguay every 3 month for several years. I assume there must have been people who were forced to return to their country of origin, they are just not around to tell about it.
While everything generally works as described above in absolute majority of the cases, your own mileage may vary. Getting a visa is still a privilege.
Please, don't confuse overstayed visa with expired passport. With expired passport you can only return home (special permission from your consulate may be required) but it is not valid for international travel at all.

 

[bjrutledge]

Elpanada, I suppose you are right --- if you have the stamp in your passport, then you have the stamp. But you are missing my point.

The question is whether they will give you the stamp or not. Personally, I would not want to be standing in line, waiting to re-enter Argentina, and be denied entrance. Or go to the Immigration Office here and wind up being told that I had to leave the country soon. Or lose my (stamped) passport and then have my case scrutinized by more zealous immigration officials when I went to get whatever stamps I needed on the new passport.

In the US people can be (and sometimes are) turned away at the airport, forced to get on another plane and fly back to wherever they flew in from. Like Igor said, nobody here has a story like that to tell. But then if they did, they wouldn't be here to tell it, right? Also, in the US people who overstay their visa can be banned from re-entering the country for 5 years (and I do know of cases where that has happened).

Again, there are two separate questions here, and they shouldn't be confused. The only really important question (in my mind, anyway) is what the law states, and I simply am not sure (nor do I have any particular need to find out, since I have residence here).

Assuming that staying more than X number of days per year on a tourist visa is not allowed, then the second question is whether or not you can get away with ignoring the law. Personally, I think questions like that are unanswerable because they are always backward-looking. I always think of the warning that you see on the prospectus for a mutual fund, something about past performance being no guarantee of future performance.

Nobody has a "right" to visit Argentina (or any other country), it is a privilege granted by the government, and it can be taken away.

 

[Elpanada]

Elpanada, I suppose you are right --- if you have the stamp in your passport, then you have the stamp. But you are missing my point.

From reading what you wrote it looked to me as if the main-point of what you wrote was "Even though you have the stamp, you're not here legally.". If you take a second look at what you wrote then maybe you'll see that reading that out of it is a logical thing to do.

The question is whether they will give you the stamp or not.
Personally, I would not want to be standing in line, waiting to
re-enter Argentina, and be denied entrance. Or go to the Immigration
Office here and wind up being told that I had to leave the country
soon. Or lose my (stamped) passport and then have my case scrutinized
by more zealous immigration officials when I went to get whatever
stamps I needed on the new passport.

Before I read what Igor here wrote I really hadn't heard about anyone having any trouble of that sort so I did not think that whether they will give you the stamp or not was a question. But yes that doesn't really sound like a pleasant situation to be in.

In the US people can be (and sometimes are) turned away at the airport,
forced to get on another plane and fly back to wherever they flew in
from. Like Igor said, nobody here has a story like that to tell. But
then if they did, they wouldn't be here to tell it, right?

It's that way with most nations and Argentina is perhaps one of them. Argentina does not allow citizens of all countries to enter without applying for visas. My bet is that if you are from a country whose citizens are obliged to apply for visas before entering Argentina and you show up at the airport here without one that you'll be on your way home.

Nobody has a "right" to visit Argentina (or any other country), it is a
privilege granted by the government, and it can be taken away.

There is a difference between right and legal right ofcourse, countries are after all nothing more than territories seperated from other territories by invisible lines. But legally speaking yes some people do have a right to visit Argentina which can not really be taken away from them namely Argentinian citizens living abroad.

 

[sapphos]

I also know of people who have been hassled after multiple visits back and forth to Uruguay over an extended time period. It is definately something to be concerned about and is something the immigration officials can enforce if they want to. The best is if you want to stay in the country long term is to try to get a rentista, student, retiree visa, etc. If you only plan to stay here for a year or so then you could probably get away with it.The U.S. by the way is extremely strict about people entering the country. It is absolutely nothing like entering here. There is no leaving the country and rentering it again to renew your tourist visa. They will enforce how many times you've been in the country. Legally you have the right to come twice in a year for 3 months each time, but they have the right and will with no problem refuse your entry. My husband is from France and he is well aware of this ruling. French citizens do not need to apply for a visa to enter the U.S. but that doesn't stop the immigration officials from sending the person right back to France if they think they've been "visiting" too often and too long.
Argentina is very open to people coming here - it is simply not the same as the U.S., they know that people are spending money and have opened their doors to tourists. For now they are looking the other way, but that could change at any time. I understand that it's very frustrating if you don't want to apply for or can't apply for a long term visa, but it means having to always consider that there could be a problem. Something to be thinking about when standing apprehensively in that line.

I think that when possible it's good to leave the country for more than just an afternoon or a day.