Our Visa process hasn’t been that bad of an ordeal, we’ve pretty much been held up by just one document. I’ve heard of other people that have had crazy ordeals trying to get visas, although we don’t have ours yet, it hasn’t been that much of an ordeal. Part of the problem is the different requirements from one consulate to another and then on top of that you get different answers from different people depending on who you talk to at the consulate and which page your looking at on the website. So we get this great big list of things that you need, some of the documents you know you need and some of them are wild cards…you need to get them just in case the person that takes your visa apps wants them. Here’s the list of documents needed:
- Visa applications w/ small passport sized photos
- Passports
- Birth Certificates for the whole family
- Marriage Certificate
- Background checks from places you’ve lived in the last 5 years
- Last 6 months of bank statements
- Last 6 months of credit card statements
- Proof of employment
- Copy of Drivers License
- Round trip tickets
- Letter of Invitation from a recognized religious organization in Argentina.
- Translations of Documents
- Authentications of Documents
All the certificates have to be authenticated for international use. That means having the office of the Secretary of State from the State that its from put an “Apostille” on it, authenticating it as a real State document. This part of the process was somewhat tedious for us. We were all born in different places. I was born in Ohio, Tara in D.C., Chi and Elijah in PA, and Zeke in MD. I didn’t trust the mail process to get everything in time, so we decided to make office visits to get all the necesarry documents in hand. We got alot of this footwok done last year before leaving for Costa Rica. Costa Rica required a different kind of authentication than Argentina requires but we got extra copies of everything and get the needed authentications last year for Argentina.
The background checks were a bit of an ordeal as well. Part of the issue with these is the timing, they have to be dated within 30 days of your arrival in Argentina, so you can’t get it until you have a pretty good idea of when you’ll get you visa and depart. We didn’t realize we would need a background chceck from Costa Rica until 2 days before we left Costa Rica, so that one was pretty difficult to get. Fortunatley we had some good friends still in CR that gave a us a huge hand and did all the leg work for us. I had to file the necessary paperwork at the CR consulate here in D.C. and he had to pick it up in CR, get it authenticated at the Argentine consulate in CR, then Fed-Ex it to me. There was a student sale at the end of the trimester at school and there were some other missionary students there that were going to Argentina as well, they tipped us off to the need to have the background checks and they gave us the step by step process (in CR) for getting them. If we hadn’t gotten that infofrom them, it may have taken us another month of figuring it out from the U.S. A wild card document for us is a background check from PA. We lived in PA within the last 5 years, but didn’t know if we would need one or not, we got it and got it authenticated, but that process was a bit longer than anticipated and so it’s now out-of-date. We’re hoping that won’t be an issue because it was 4 years ago that we lived there, that is if they ask for it.
The translations were a wild card type of thing. Apparently only the D.C. consulate requires them and they say they require certified translations. The problem is that any translations done outside Argentina are not valid in Argentina, they are useless. On top of that certified translations are expensive and we were told by someone on the phone that all our documents would need to be translated, wow! So we didn’t get them translated and decided to wait until we submitted them to see what they would say. Fortunately, the person that was receiving our submissions only required our certificates to be translated and they only needed to be notarized and not certified, which means anyone who knew Spanish could translate them. A friend at church was fluent and did it for us free of charge! whew!
The plane tickets were another wild card, all the documents we read on the website said that we would need round trip tickets for our visa. Those are more expensive than one-way and we were not going to be coming home for 2 years. We took the chance of purchasing only a one-way (then if need be purchasing the a return portion for visa purposes but getting it refunded after we were in Argetina, thats a big hasle so I didn’t want to do that if I didn’t have to). Thankfully we ended up only needing a one-way ticket.
The last but most important doument we need is the “Letter of Invitation”. This is the document that has been holding us up for the most part. Normally it isn’t too dificult to obtain. But, you never know whats going to transpire when you deal with buracracies of government. When Nate went into the Government offices to start the process he found that several regulations had changed. Basically it was a 3 step process (I think I have it down, but Nate, correct me if I got something wrong). 1) GBIM needed to be an officially recognized organization in Argentina, 2) Nate needed to be an officially recognized rep of the organization in Argentina, 3) Submit papers to the appropriate office in order to have the invitation approved by the government. It was thought that that all that was needed was to submit the invitation papework,but when Nate when in he found that the regulations had changed how to be a recognized relious organization in Argentina. So they had to go back to step one. Not only was that a big delay but the first person that Nate had spoken to in the government office didn’t know what she was tkaing about and gave him bad information, by the time he found out and got the right information we had about another 2 week delay. Argh! Finally, it’s about the time fo the Ddocuments to ready and Nate keeps calling them, only to find out there’s been another small delay becasue that office is in the midst of changing computer sysytems, so there’s a back-log. He’s finally was able to pick them up last Thursday and FedEx’ed them to us immediately.
We bought tickets for the 5th of February, but we won’t have all our documents into the Consulate until, either today or tomorrow. It’s looking like it’s gonna be tomorrow. As I’m typing this I’m waiting for the FedEx truck to how up. The consulate closes at 1pm for Visa stuff and it’s 12:26, it takes about 40 min to get there. Sooooo…tomorrow it is. They originaly said that it only taks a week to get the visa when submit your application. Ours is already submitted, but they are waiting for this one document. Pray that the Visa will come through on Wednesday. I think that would be a minor miracle.
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It just showed up…I’m gonna try and get it down there…it’s 12:30
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No luck, the door was locked. We’ll be back there first thing tomorrow morning. Hopefully we’ll be able to get our visa before Thursday, seems unlikely though.
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