Joew said:
I did have a free consultation with one of the lawyers recommended here - Gabriel Celano
http://www.celano.com.ar which was good to clarify all the options. I am not sure yet if I am going to use a lawyer, will decide once I have all of my things done that are down to me. Feels a bit like "why should I use one if I have to do all these bits anyway"? but at the same time I am wary of the complications of the financial proof, and that migraciones are probably constantly moving the goal posts.
Gabriel is my lawyer, which I've posted in other threads.
BTW - he communicated with the state in the US where I was born, and got my birth certificate for me. He filled out the FBI form needed to request my criminal records from the States. He walked me over to a local police station to get the prints and make sure they were done correctly and filed the FBI report. He got both my birth certificate and FBI report apostilled and even got them translated here when they arrived. I reimbursed him for the fees that he paid, which are above his quoted fee, but I would have paid them anyway and he didn't charge me anything extra for his hassle.
The only time I had to spend to get my precaria was a trip to get my fingerprints taken electronically (I forget which part of the process that was for, but right before I went to apply for my precaria) that took about 10 minutes and a trip to migraciones to actually apply for the precaria - and that took about a half hour.
Also - Gabriel took me to Banco Galicia, took me right to a guy he knows, and had him open a bank account (savings) for me is about ten minutes...
Everything mentioned above was handled by Gabriel and his associate, with no problems for me, and the personal visits went smooth as silk because they were with me.
I have a friend who is getting residency as a major share holder in a company. This is a complicated process and takes awhile. It's similar (but even harder, I believe) than doing the "rentista" visa. Gabriel is handling his also.
As far as complications with the financial proofs and such - at the end of the day, as I understand it, any "complication" that is not against the law is open for discussion at migraciones. I have been told that if there is a reason to deny and it's an "on the fence" kind of thing (i.e., the personnel have discretion), someone who knows people at migraciones can almost always solve the issue with a little "gift." Mind you, I'm not talking about paying someone at migraciones to break the law, but rather to look at the matter and decide in your favor instead of either rejecting you or causing you to jump through hoops that would not have been necessary otherwise.
My prime example is a friend of mine who is getting residency and had an item on her FBI report from almost 30 years ago. As I understand it, policy is that migraciones will only look at the last 5 years of criminal history, but the FBI sent all 30 years. She has been told that there will be extra complications related to this, that migraciones will choose to review it since it was sent, and that a little gift may be required to get the lawyer who reviews it at migraciones to write a brief saying that he or she thinks it is acceptable and don't make this an issue. Otherwise, there are hoops that she will have to jump through that could literally take a couple of years to get that sorted out.
I'm a software developer and I can't tell you the number of people I deal with who have me come in and re-do something that someone did in Access (as an example). They always tell me "it seemed so simple, and I got started good, but when I got halfway through I realized I didn't have enough knowledge on how to make it work the way I wanted it."
There are always good reasons to let the professionals handle things when you can.
