New family arrival

[djshalt]

Hey everyone!

I wanted to get some general advice if anyone can help. I am moving with my wife, young kid, (another on the way, due late November) and German Shepherd. We were planning the move last year, but due to my job we had to stay in Mexico for a little while longer. We will be flying in to BA on the 6th of May. We are using abogados Celano to help us with permanent residency, but will be staying over our 90 day tourist visa by about six weeks - which they assured me was a non-issue. I plan to go to Colonia every other month to bring over USD, and we have an Airbnb booked for a few months until we get our DNI. We also found a good OB doctor at the Italian hospital in Belgrano and we will be staying in that immediate area.

I just want to touch base with people who are actually there and make sure I am not overlooking some aspect of the move and or plan.

I appreciate all of the knowledge you guys share on this forum!

V/r
David

 

[FrankPintor]

You don't normally need lawyers to deal with residency, just a "facilitator" who's basically a gopher with contacts in Immigration to smooth the path. Using a lawyer is over the top (though I don't know how you would go from tourist to permanent resident in one go).

You can extend your tourist visa directly at Immigration within 10 days to the expiration date.

You probably don't need to go to Colonia (unless you like it), you should be able to get cash with your foreign debit card at ATMs here. Galicia was tagged as having the highest payouts (though that information is a bit old). You won't get the blue rate, but you won't get the official rate either. I believe @carride posted a calculator here.

It sounds like you might need local health insurance.

Belgrano is a very desirable area, more so (in my opinion) than Recoleta or Palermo. You will most likely not need a car (and on-street parking is a nightmare anyway).

There is a lot of information here that's well worth searching for.

 

[Johnny]

Hey everyone!

I wanted to get some general advice if anyone can help. I am moving with my wife, young kid, (another on the way, due late November) and German Shepherd. We were planning the move last year, but due to my job we had to stay in Mexico for a little while longer. We will be flying in to BA on the 6th of May. We are using abogados Celano to help us with permanent residency, but will be staying over our 90 day tourist visa by about six weeks - which they assured me was a non-issue. I plan to go to Colonia every other month to bring over USD, and we have an Airbnb booked for a few months until we get our DNI. We also found a good OB doctor at the Italian hospital in Belgrano and we will be staying in that immediate area.

I just want to touch base with people who are actually there and make sure I am not overlooking some aspect of the move and or plan.

I appreciate all of the knowledge you guys share on this forum!

V/r
David

Just a note-Hospital Italiano is in Almagro rather than Belgrano. Unless there is another, or maybe an outpatient clinic?

 

[djshalt]

You don't normally need lawyers to deal with residency, just a "facilitator" who's basically a gopher with contacts in Immigration to smooth the path. Using a lawyer is over the top (though I don't know how you would go from tourist to permanent resident in one go).

You can extend your tourist visa directly at Immigration within 10 days to the expiration date.

You probably don't need to go to Colonia (unless you like it), you should be able to get cash with your foreign debit card at ATMs here. Galicia was tagged as having the highest payouts (though that information is a bit old). You won't get the blue rate, but you won't get the official rate either. I believe @carride posted a calculator here.

It sounds like you might need local health insurance.

Belgrano is a very desirable area, more so (in my opinion) than Recoleta or Palermo. You will most likely not need a car (and on-street parking is a nightmare anyway).

There is a lot of information here that's well worth searching for.

Great information, thank you! We are planning to have the baby here, and from what I was told that should allow us to bypass the temporary visa requirement. At least that is what they said at Celano. I think you are right about health insurance, I will look into that asap. Probably better than paying out of pocket. Also good news about the car, we got used to walking everywhere in CDMX so glad to hear that its similar in BA.

Thank you for taking the time to respond and the advice, I appreciate it!

 

[AdrianB]

Also cuevas right now charge 0% fee to convert usdt to usd cash. So you dont need to go to uruguay.

 

[djshalt]

Just a note-Hospital Italiano is in Almagro rather than Belgrano. Unless there is another, or maybe an outpatient clinic?

Ok, good catch! I was using google maps to find hospitals in the Belgrano area and there was an Italian hospital, but I just looked on street views and it is a very small building, probably an outpatient clinic like you said. Definitely not the big hospital I was thinking of.

 

[djshalt]

Also cuevas right now charge 0% fee to convert usdt to usd cash. So you dont need to go to uruguay.

That's awesome to hear! I am going to need to get myself up to speed on using crypto. I appreciate the heads up!

 

[FrankPintor]

You won't find much similar to CDMX here, unless you want to compare Puerto Madero to Santa Fe, for example. Belgrano is very built up, with a mix of residential and commercial, very practical for living (basically it's a 15-minute city, if that doesn't offend anyone, you can get almost everything you need within a radius of 3 blocks). You won't find the nice divided tree-lined park avenues like you have there in La Condesa, for example. Avenida Melian is considered to be the nicest avenue here. All the parks are off down by Avenida Libertador.

Also, coming from CDMX be prepared for a shock to your palates. Argentinian cooking is not very exciting. If you like cooking for yourselves, you are at least close to Chinatown, where you can get spices as well as a good selection of fish.

 

[JacksonMusk]

Hey everyone!

I wanted to get some general advice if anyone can help. I am moving with my wife, young kid, (another on the way, due late November) and German Shepherd. We were planning the move last year, but due to my job we had to stay in Mexico for a little while longer. We will be flying in to BA on the 6th of May. We are using abogados Celano to help us with permanent residency, but will be staying over our 90 day tourist visa by about six weeks - which they assured me was a non-issue. I plan to go to Colonia every other month to bring over USD, and we have an Airbnb booked for a few months until we get our DNI. We also found a good OB doctor at the Italian hospital in Belgrano and we will be staying in that immediate area.

I just want to touch base with people who are actually there and make sure I am not overlooking some aspect of the move and or plan.

I appreciate all of the knowledge you guys share on this forum!

V/r
David

Hey,
I'm looking to do similar with my wife in September,

so from my understanding you're being advised you can simply come on a tourist visa, overstay, have the baby, and then use the babies birth certificate to apply for PR immediately, and likely citizenship shortly after, and that the overstay will not be an issue?

I'm always paranoid about immigration stuff, so any info you could share - also about life since you've arrived, maybe getting local drivers license or any experiences in settling in the last month would be tremendously helpful.

 

[djshalt]

Hello!
I am a bit reluctant to give immigration advice because it depends so much on the individual circumstances and details. Highly recommend at least doing a zoom consult with an attorney. But in theory yes, the scenario you describe is how it should go. However, immigration here is fickle and depends greatly on the individual immigration official that you work with. One of the benefits of going with a lawyer is not necessarily their legal advice but rather their ability to get you in front of the "right" immigration official. One of the downsides is that until the baby is born and you get your DNI you will have some difficulty with rental contracts, bank opening, etc.. Nothing insurmountable though.

If you are not experienced with living in Latin America, doing this while taking care of the issues that accompany having a baby may be too much. We have lived in Mexico for the previous six years, and while not a one to one comparable experience, it has helped us navigate Argentina greatly.

Spanish - or rather Castellano of the rioplantanese variety - is a must. Most of the medical professionals, landlords, people from the power companies, etc. speak limited English. For someone here as a tourist perhaps not really necessary, but living here - already a difficult endeavor in some aspects - will be made exponentially more difficult without a handle on the language. I speak decent Spanish - at the B2 level - and I taught a course at the graduate level in Spanish at a university in Mexico City. I still very much struggle with certain situations here in BA due to the different accent, slang, and the rapidity of speech. Just something to be aware of.

For us I wound up at immigration on Tuesday to get a precaria that was needed to sign a rental contract. Which leads to housing. Airbnb is tricky here as a great number of listings on the site are not actually available and the owners can be very reluctant to rent. Luckily a fellow member here was able to point me in the right direction, and with an attorney I was able to get the paperwork that was required to sign a rental contract.

A driver's license will require a DNI, and is not needed to drive as long as you have a valid license from your home country from my understanding. Driving here - in the city at least - is not needed. The subte, taxis and the shoe leather express will get you wherever you need to go.

Another issue will be getting your money into Argentina. For me, the USDT crypto route has been the most helpful. I found the Colonia trip to be unneeded. I would add set up western union from your home country and not from here. I didn't and it is almost nonfunctional and the VPNs I have tried have not helped. With crypto though this point is moot. There are also other ways to get money here but I am not sure that the people involved want details posted online. Just make sure for every plan you have a back up in case your primary means is not working that day.

I don't know if you have other children, but I can also go into some detail about getting them enrolled into school.

I don't want to paint a grim picture of Buenos Aires with what I have written above. It is a great city and we love it here. The people are amazingly friendly, especially when they find out that you're staying here long term. But nothing in LATAM is as easy or simple as it may seem on paper and Buenos Aires is no exception.

I don't know your specific situation. You may already know all of this, and if so I apologize for the redundancy. I will also point out that some of the difficulties I have had others may not have had. YMMV greatly. Keep in mind that all of this is coming from someone who has been here for less than two months. One of my pet peeves is when someone gives "living in Mexico" advice and they had been there for a month. The advice is often not only wrong but egregiously so. I think it takes about a year or more to really get a handle on living somewhere. So I can only tell you how it has been for me and my family.

If you have any specific questions I will try to answer.

V/r
David