One-year Temporary Residency

Residency Paperwork for Argentina
Originally uploaded by blmurch

So, we were hoping for a visa in July. That didn’t come to pass and so we got another three-month extension to September. Which is when we received a third nerve-jangling letter from migraciones. We had to navigate one more maze, but we jumped through the flaming hoops, ran the obstacle course and came out grasping our prize.

This last letter we received helpfully informed us that there was an error in the company’s founding documents. Kragen Sittler founded the company, but Kragen Sitaker was applying for residency. Putting it mildly, Argentine bureaucracy is NOT equipped to deal with name changes. It’s fairly common in the USA and causes all sorts of headaches for applicants here.

Upon the advice of our lawyer, we updated Kragen’s passport with his “new” last name. This was good advice, but unfortunately, we’d already registered the company in June 2008 with Kragen’s valid-at-the-time passport with his old name and old passport number. In order to get our residency visa we had to fix the paperwork we had on file with the Inspección General de Justicia. This involved working with our escribana again. We updated the registry with the IGJ, paid the filing fee and I had three visits to their offices to massage the paperwork through. The first time, I asked what needed to be done. The second time I went with our escribana’s assistant to clarify a couple of points and the third time I dropped off all the necessary paperwork and picked up a stamped receipt to show migraciones that we were in tramite with the IGJ to resolve the issue.

One of the items I needed to show the IGJ was an issue of the Boletin Oficial with our correction published inside for all to read. I took two copies, “por las dudas” (literally, “for the doubts” but idomatically “just in case”). It was a good thing too because when I dropped off the IGJ papers at migraciones that afternoon, the officers there found a typo in the document the escribana wrote up. My heart dropped into my throat as this would require weeks more of delays to get that error fixed. However, the issue of the Boletín Oficial had the correct information, and so they accepted a photocopy of this as proof of compliance along with the IGJ paperwork.

We submitted all of this paperwork in October and our residencia temporaria precaria was good through the beginning of December. When I dropped off the paperwork in October, the officer told me to come back just before our precarias were due.

So, we went back in early December to see the officers in Building 5 of the Dirección Nacional de Migraciones. They told us the paperwork had finally been approved, and that it was ready to pick up in the front office. We triumphantly, but also a bit incredulously, walked to the line at the info booth to take a number. Once we got to the front of the line, we were cheerfully informed that the computer system was running a bit slow and for us to please have some patience. I smiled and jokingly asked if they were running Windows. His look was all I needed to know. Just then, the computer system took a nose dive and crashed for good. We couldn’t get our numbers at all now. We waited. We waited in line for the system to come back online. We waited some more.

There was a lot of back and forth chatter between the info desk and the desks we were meant to go to. Finally, someone came to look at the computer, rebooted it and it once it finished that process we were given a number!

We then moved to the last phase. I was finally getting nervous and excited and wondering if this could be real. My name was called and I went up, was given a form to read and sign and my file was complete! I was given the paperwork for the one year temporary residency! Then Kragen’s name was called and he read and signed his visa. We were also given the information on the paperwork that we need to apply for our DNI, which will give us our national identity papers. One chapter of bureaucrazy closes and another one opens up.

2 Comments

• 

  By Kate, 2010-07-02 @ 00:20

  Why didn’t I know about this site? This is awesome, Beatrice. I’m adding this to my links ahora mismo.
• 

  By beatrice, 2010-07-02 @ 01:00

  Because I don’t post enough! I have a doosie to write up about a messed up bank transfer…

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment