Paying the visa overstay fine was pretty simple but here are a few things I wish I had known before.
1) You have to pay before checking in. I went to the Avianca counter (which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND as a flight operator) and the woman looked at my passport and very kindly told me I had to pay the fine first. She let me leave my baggage in the meantime (and did not charge me overage fees on my 25 and 27 kilo suitcases) and I sought out the counter.
2) You have to first go to the Migraciones counter which is buried in the back of the airport near where you go to declare firearms and pay exit taxes. At 5:30 am there was no one there but I just shouted back and someone appeared. It took him quite a while to find my most recent entrance stamp and at first thought I'd been there uninterupted since 2008 until I pointed out my newer stamp from November 2009. (Not sure if in the case of being here since 2008 I would have gotten into the tax interview as mentioned in this post.)
3) It took him about 10 minutes but he finally printed out a paper that I then had to take next door to the national bank. I paid my 300 peso/80 dollar overstay fine there and then had to take the paperwork back to Migraciones.
4) Migraciones stamped my paid paperwork and then I was free to check in.
5) I had to present this paperwork to the flight operator to be checked in.
6) I had to present this paperwork again at Imigraciones where they did not give me a big ugly 'overstay' stamp, but the woman did hand-write a long numbers-and-letters code with an unknown (to me) meaning over my exit stamp.
And that was it! Everyone was nice and friendly. The man at Migraciones asked if I lived in Argentina but only as a way to make conversation while he tried to get his computer to operate. He seemed genuinely unconcerned with the length of my stay, but maybe that's because it was less than 180 days, although he did not try to search for how many days I'd been in the country before November 2009 which could have easily added up to 180 for all he knew.
Tax exit interviews and a tunnel to Uruguay... the craziness continues and I look forward to monitoring it from afar!
1) You have to pay before checking in. I went to the Avianca counter (which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND as a flight operator) and the woman looked at my passport and very kindly told me I had to pay the fine first. She let me leave my baggage in the meantime (and did not charge me overage fees on my 25 and 27 kilo suitcases) and I sought out the counter.
2) You have to first go to the Migraciones counter which is buried in the back of the airport near where you go to declare firearms and pay exit taxes. At 5:30 am there was no one there but I just shouted back and someone appeared. It took him quite a while to find my most recent entrance stamp and at first thought I'd been there uninterupted since 2008 until I pointed out my newer stamp from November 2009. (Not sure if in the case of being here since 2008 I would have gotten into the tax interview as mentioned in this post.)
3) It took him about 10 minutes but he finally printed out a paper that I then had to take next door to the national bank. I paid my 300 peso/80 dollar overstay fine there and then had to take the paperwork back to Migraciones.
4) Migraciones stamped my paid paperwork and then I was free to check in.
5) I had to present this paperwork to the flight operator to be checked in.
6) I had to present this paperwork again at Imigraciones where they did not give me a big ugly 'overstay' stamp, but the woman did hand-write a long numbers-and-letters code with an unknown (to me) meaning over my exit stamp.
And that was it! Everyone was nice and friendly. The man at Migraciones asked if I lived in Argentina but only as a way to make conversation while he tried to get his computer to operate. He seemed genuinely unconcerned with the length of my stay, but maybe that's because it was less than 180 days, although he did not try to search for how many days I'd been in the country before November 2009 which could have easily added up to 180 for all he knew.
Tax exit interviews and a tunnel to Uruguay... the craziness continues and I look forward to monitoring it from afar!
