The route from perma-tourist to legal.

Hi,
You can get your Birth certificate online now. It can be posted out too you, but you do need an apostille on it and police check!
suerte
 
Hey mini - thanks for setting me (and others) straight about waiting 3 years with the temporaria before applying for a DNI - I guess I wasn't well enough informed since my process went kaput before that. So I didn't experience it, just thought it was the go.
OK, my problems re: my denial and pending court case is this - I went through the work visa route - was working for a company here - but by factura only - for what she wanted -(translate some stuff to english, help her with some english speaking clients etc) but I wasn't full time based in the office - and migraciones wanted to see this. It's a catch 22 - I couldn't be an employee cause I didn't have the documents etc - but I must take some responsiblity for this too. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for my lawyer/migraciones....and I guess tribunales to take their stance. I have quit my job, my lawyer informed migraciones of this, and we sent a letter to migraciones quitting my residency application. This weekend I went to Colonia (out on the last day of my residencia precaria - and returned on a 90 day tourist visa) as was required. Was detained at migraciones in Uruguay for about 12 hours - but back in with a tourist visa.
I guess this doesn't help you much - but honestly, can't tell you more - as I never receive any reliable info from migraciones about my situation either - so waiting.

But my best advice is - esllou - this is not an easy process, so if you're serious about getting the residency - spend the dosh and make it easier for yourself. Yep, it's expensive, but my state of mental health for 3 months during this, has cost me more than the $'s for advice. I've been nervous as hell!
 
Whether you use a lawyer here or not, you will have to sort out your UK birth certificate and police record check your self.

With the birth certificate there are companies that will order it for you, apostile it, and mail it to you. But I ordered a new copy of mine from:
http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/ (£10 ish)

For the police record check you need to do a "subject access request" to your local police force. Here is the METs for example (I used thames valley though for me):
http://www.met.police.uk/information/request_forms.htm

Like people have said, they need to be apostilled in the UK. While looking into it I saw that the office for the UK that handled this is Milton Keynes - and since I am going there in June, instead of having certificates mailed all over the place I will take the 2 certificates I have waiting for me and get them apostilled at the counter. They then have to be translated officially here too...

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.

Regarding bank accounts - I was told that all I needed was a CDI, certificado domicilio and my passport. In theory that was correct, but no bank would accept the certificado domicilio as proof of address and wanted a utility bill in my name - which I don't have. If I had this though, banks would have given me an account.

This thread has good information on it all:
http://baexpats.org/expat-life/7490-argentine-bank-account-without-dni.html

In the end I managed to get BNP (an unfortunate name for a bank if you are from the UK) to open one up with only the above documentation. Then over the next 2 months they asked me a couple more questions that I had already answered - really dragging it out! Finally, last month it was opened - and 2 days later BNP were taken over by santandar rio - so I have my account with them who wouldn't let me open an account with them previously... The lawyer I spoke to told me he can have one opened for me the next day if I wanted - but I was already done by this point.
 
Different banks seem to have different rules. Banco Nacion let me open an account just with my passport when I was in Iguazú. Banco Frances and others won't let you near them without a DNI.
 
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.
 
ElQueso said:
There are always good reasons to let the professionals handle things when you can.

eg. If you have US$1000 to toss around. (I don't!)

I've been through all the goal-post-shifting, returning to the same office 4 times, waiting 6 hours in line to be told I'm in the wrong place, stuff going missing in the post, etc etc. But, 'so what?' It's all pretty standard beaurocratic red-tape and 'jobsworthiness' - mildly annoying, but not life threatening.

Although the elapsed time between applying for my precaria and getting my DNI has been 2 years, I estimate it probably cost me about 5 or 6 days of my actual time and no more than AR$500 in cash terms.

Al
 
Dolly said:
Hey mini - thanks for setting me (and others) straight about waiting 3 years with the temporaria before applying for a DNI - I guess I wasn't well enough informed since my process went kaput before that. So I didn't experience it, just thought it was the go.

I only happen to know this as after 1.5yr I still haven't applied for the DNI. & I'm being pushed to do it... We'll see who wins this battle! ;)

Dolly said:
OK, my problems re: my denial and pending court case is this - I went through the work visa route - was working for a company here - but by factura only - for what she wanted -(translate some stuff to english, help her with some english speaking clients etc) but I wasn't full time based in the office - and migraciones wanted to see this. It's a catch 22 - I couldn't be an employee cause I didn't have the documents etc - but I must take some responsiblity for this too. Unfortunately, I am still waiting for my lawyer/migraciones....and I guess tribunales to take their stance. I have quit my job, my lawyer informed migraciones of this, and we sent a letter to migraciones quitting my residency application. This weekend I went to Colonia (out on the last day of my residencia precaria - and returned on a 90 day tourist visa) as was required. Was detained at migraciones in Uruguay for about 12 hours - but back in with a tourist visa.
I guess this doesn't help you much - but honestly, can't tell you more - as I never receive any reliable info from migraciones about my situation either - so waiting.

But my best advice is - esllou - this is not an easy process, so if you're serious about getting the residency - spend the dosh and make it easier for yourself. Yep, it's expensive, but my state of mental health for 3 months during this, has cost me more than the $'s for advice. I've been nervous as hell!

Eeks! That does sound like a stressful situation! So sorry you have deal with that. I hope you get it sorted ASAP. Suerte!
 
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