Sleuth said:
I think you're the only person I've heard about who has been flagged as a permatourist. Can you let us know more about how it happened? What exactly did they tell you?
Thanks!
Hey. Sure, I can give you more information. My partner and I both faithfully crossed the border every 90 days to keep our visas "in the white" (much to the chagrin of other expat friends of ours who have overstayed indefinitely and never caught heat for it) for the better part of 4 years. When we crossed in october (Colonia) the border agent hassled my partner about the number of stamps, and threatened that next time he would not be let in. We prefer Carmelo, and hoped it was a "low-key" place to cross, as opposed to Colonia. Anyway, when we crossed the border in January (this was from Carmelo, Uruguay back into the Tigre port) the border agents said that we had "too many stamps" and that we were obviously not tourists (technical label was "turista falsa") and that we had 30 days to get our residency paperwork in order. They entered our address into the system, and wrote "30 dias" on the stamp that was put into our passports. I have a friend of a friend who works in migraciones, and she confirmed with me that after 15 days our names were, indeed, entered into the migraciones computer system.
Thankfully I had already requested all my paperwork--my birth certificate was apostilled and translated and my FBI background check was enroute. If I hadn't requested all of this already I would never have made the 30 days. Because we have a business that is established in the States, with the help of our lawyer I was able to submit an application for the rentista visa, which was subsequently approved (after a few rounds of apostilled official paperwork submission in May). My partner, who was also flagged at the time, did not have his paperwork at the ready. He stayed in the country past his visa expiration, but nobody came knocking at the door. He submitted his paperwork in June, and it is currently in revision. It did not matter that his visa had expired, and he did not need to request a prorroga. We are waiting to see if the old or new laws apply to his application.
Prior to applying for the rentista visa, while we were examining our options, our lawyers did tell us that if we wanted to leave the country on the current 30 day visa we were given that we would NOT be granted access back into the country for six months and one day. If we were to leave the country and return in just over six months, we would be eligible for another 90 day tourist visa. There was also a dirty border agent who was willing to give the new stamp to the passport for $800 (US)--too steep for us. For what it's worth, if a new agent stamps over the old "warning" stamp, the old stamp is ineffectual. Also important to know is if we had "lost" our passports before being flagged (or even not crossed faithfully, resulting in fewer stamps) this would likely have never happened. It was the sheer number of crossing stamps that caught the attention of the border guards, not anything electronically entered into the system.
My attorney also said that the same laws one applied under for a visa continue to apply (are grandfathered in?) when the visa is due for renewal. This may or may not be true, I think the laws change day by day. At least I have a year to see how this unfolds. I have since heard of this "false tourist" thing happening to at least a couple of other people. It is my understanding that the crackdown is happening due to the laws that changed in mid-December 2009, so my bet is that we'll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing.
