Practical Considerations of Temporary Residence Status

[rmike]

I am trying to decide whether to go ahead with an application for temporary residency based on pension income ("pensionado"). This to extend my current 3-month stay by a couple of months w/o going through too many bureaucratic contortions and/or visa runs. Eventually, I will have to figure out whether Argentina might be a long-term option for me. Would be nice to get a head start on permanent residency while I am at it.

That said, two things rub me the wrong way. From what my immigration guy tells me, I will have to put my pension payments in an ARG bank account for the duration of my temp visa. So, even when I return to my current residence of Mexico, I will have to provide the Argentine treasury with hard cash in exchange for a volatile currency that I will need to exchange back to cover living expenses in MXN. Plus, more than 5 months outside the country, and the clock resets on the 3-year cumulative run-up to permanent status. Well, that's not temporary residency by my definition...

Not trying to debate the sanity, or lack thereof, of this setup; but I would like to hear from current temp residency holders about their experience. How strictly are those rules are being enforced? Of course, simply extending my tourist visa by another 3 months would be one way to go about this, but I'll be losing one year towards permanent status. Not interested in citizenship yet.

Any pointers greatly appreciated!

Mike

 

[Alby]

Going through the bureaucratic contortions might be well worth it in a way you can't yet see. The wheels turn very slowly. If your intention is only to stay a few months, then the mere act of applying for a temporary pensionista residency will suffice without you ever having to deposit a dime. If you started today, it may take you a month or two (or more) to gather sufficient documentation to reach the precaria stage. Only at that point does Migraciones start to evaluate your case. That evaluation stage could take months and months. Only at the point they grant you the temporary residency (perhaps 6-12 months from now) would you need to start depositing cash. And you would only do so if your intention was to try and renew that temporary residency another 12 months down the line. Should the latter be your ambition, then, yes, you would need to start depositing your pension. But if you were happy to just serve a one-year sentence in Argentina and not apply for a renewal, there would be no need to satisfy the banking requirement. In any event, if you are depositing to meet the requirement, it is not the full amount of your pension. Under current rules, you would only deposit an amount equivalent to five times the local minimum wage in Argentina. That amount is currently around US$1,200.

To clarify this comment: "Plus, more than 5 months outside the country, and the clock resets on the 3-year cumulative run-up to permanent status." I don't think that's quite the way it works. If you obtained temporary residency and then did not spend the requisite amount of time in Argentina during the subsequent 12 months, you are certainly no closer to permanent residency than you were on the day they issued the temporary residence. But it's not three years that the clock resets to. Once your 12-month temporary residency expires (i.e., 365 days after it was issued), you no longer have temporary residency, and you have to start again: a whole new application process, as if the initial process had never occurred. So the reset is much longer than three years, because you have to add in a repeat of the entire process you went through initially just to get to the date your first temporary residence was issued.

 

[rmike]

Ok. Got it. Thanks for your prompt response! I assume that missing payments will become an issue if/when I am up for renewal. From what I hear, you don't have to do the initial tap dance all over again, but migraciones wants to see last year's bank statements, correct? If I were to "abandon" my temp residency by simply stop paying into an ARG account, would that spell trouble for me if I ever decide to apply for temp residency again in the future?

As for "resetting the clock" by leaving the country for more than 5 months, what I was trying to say is that it looks as if I will still be able to ride out my first-year residency, but it wouldn't count toward those 3 years total you need for permanent residency. Again, my only concern here is more roadblocks further down the line.

I guess I'll just go ahead with the pensionista [sic] application process and let inertia work its magic. By the time they are ready to throw a proper DNI at me, I should have made up my mind. Thanks again for some straight talk amidst this bureaucratic quilombo

 

[Alby]

Correct, in theory. If you haven't deposited, they would have grounds to knock you back at your renewal attempt. Having said that, since the depositing requirement came in (mid 2023) I got through two pensionista renewals (2024, 2025) with only two monthly deposits, in the two months leading up to each renewal. That was sufficient. But this year I'm taking no chances and have done the full 12 months, since I'm now up for the transition to permanent.

On your second issue, again this is a recent change to the rules and I'm not sure it's been tested in practice. If say your 365 days began on 1 January and you stayed til 30 June and then until left until 10 December, perhaps in attempting to enter at the airport the system might record you as having lost your temporary residency on 30 November.

Regardless, the bad news is that even if you do everything right and hold the temporary residency and deposit etc, the renewal IS a rerun of the initial process: a new letter from your pension fund with a new date no more than 90 days prior to the renewal application, with the home government apostille, then officially translated here. Plus the record of the bank deposits, and local criminal record check.

 

[Alby]

Just to clarify what may seem like a contradiction between my first and second messages.

In the event you didn't complete your first temporary residency (e.g., by leaving the country for too long) and then wanted to apply again, you would start the application from scratch and take, for argument's sake, another six months just to get the new temporary residency issued and the first 365-day clock (of three towards permanent residency) ticking again. So the blowing your first temporary residency pushes the permanent out by more than 3 years.

On the other hand, if you successfully hold your first temporary residency, when you apply to renew it, you can lodge the application (and the repeated set of apostilled and translated documents and the bank records) two months before the expiry date (let's say, at the start of month 10 of your temporary residency). They may (probably will) still take months to approve the extension and finally do so beyond the expiry of your first temporary residency. But in that case, they will backdate the second year's date of commencement to the expiry date of the first year. So, even though they drag their feet, you don't lose any time on your three-year quest for PR. It's happened to me every time: even lodging my application to renew well before the expiry date of the existing term, they've never completed the renewal by the expiry date, and instead, I've already served, in one case, the first three months of my next 365 sentence by the time they issue the (backdated) renewal.

 

[rmike]

Looks like the gift that keeps on giving. An unnecessarily convoluted one, at that. My immigration guy was pretty adamant about not having to go through the apostillation process(es) again upon renewal, but that might have been a pendejada to get the show on the road. I'll try to remember posting an update here when/if that becomes a thing. Again, thanks for your input. It just baffles me how badly Argentina handles a process that's pretty straight-forward in other LATAM countries. Part of settling in, I suppose...

 

[Milton]

Just to clarify what may seem like a contradiction between my first and second messages.

In the event you didn't complete your first temporary residency (e.g., by leaving the country for too long) and then wanted to apply again, you would start the application from scratch and take, for argument's sake, another six months just to get the new temporary residency issued and the first 365-day clock (of three towards permanent residency) ticking again. So the blowing your first temporary residency pushes the permanent out by more than 3 years.

On the other hand, if you successfully hold your first temporary residency, when you apply to renew it, you can lodge the application (and the repeated set of apostilled and translated documents and the bank records) two months before the expiry date (let's say, at the start of month 10 of your temporary residency). They may (probably will) still take months to approve the extension and finally do so beyond the expiry of your first temporary residency. But in that case, they will backdate the second year's date of commencement to the expiry date of the first year. So, even though they drag their feet, you don't lose any time on your three-year quest for PR. It's happened to me every time: even lodging my application to renew well before the expiry date of the existing term, they've never completed the renewal by the expiry date, and instead, I've already served, in one case, the first three months of my next 365 sentence by the time they issue the (backdated) renewal.

Im currently in this exact position.

My precaria is expiring next week so has already been 3 months since I applied to renew my temp visa for another year and there has been no update so far its still in "supervision". I was however able to apply to renew the precaria on the page where you check the progress and it successfully registered but has not so far produced a new precaria document to show the extended dates, not sure if it is just lagging or if someone has to manually check and update it (that was 12 days ago).

 

[Alby]

Well, if my experience is any guide, assuming everything is OK with your renewal and they do eventually approve it, the disposicion, and the subsequent new DNI, will be back-dated to the date your first temporary residency expired.

 

[Milton]

Well, if my experience is any guide, assuming everything is OK with your renewal and they do eventually approve it, the disposicion, and the subsequent new DNI, will be back-dated to the date your first temporary residency expired.

Yeah just a waiting game now. A long one so far but I likely have the worst time to start renewal process as it has been summer holidays and Xmas period so even less than usual is being done in that time

 

[SlowWalker]

I went in to the migracion office in my city prior to a trip since my precaria was about to expire, and they saw that it was all reviewed but not issued, so they called the BA office then ended up issuing my temporary visa a few minutes later.