Third time lucky

Before we moved here we had heard about how Chile is the least corrupt country in South America. Whenever one comes across such statements, Chile's endemic bureaucracy is usually mentioned in the same breath, though. Bureaucracy vs corruption... when one is at the receiving end of it the differences sometimes are hard to make out.

We blogged on this topic just after arriving. A little update is in order now as some positive developments have occurred recently with regards to Christian's immigration status. His plan has always been to apply for residency on the basis of a regular foreign income in exchange for hours laboured away behind the computer screen (ie number crunching and similar data analysis type work for our ex-UK employer). This arrangement has worked out fairly well so far, except that the visa process turned out to be... well... somewhat more complex than we anticipated.

We first filed an application in June last year. One is supposed to do this by mail and the documents required can be summarised as below:

• a filled-in form;
• photo-copies of passport and the immigration card which one receives when entering the country as a tourist;
• the fully legalised (see our older blog post on this) copy of the contract or similar documents detailing the nature of the regular foreign income;
• couple of recent bank statements showing that in addition to the regular income one also has a few pesos stacked up somewhere and that the applicant therefore won't run the risk of starvation for lack of funds anytime soon.

As an interesting detail it is worth adding that foreign documents in English, French, Italian and Portuguese language are apparently accepted without translation (see 4th bullet point of the "Importante" box in this document on the Extranjería website).

Within 4 weeks of the first application we received a rejection letter stating that we failed to provide proof relating to the foreign income. Furthermore, it was required to clarify what Christian's intended "activities" within Chile were. Obvious case of rejection on the basis of "can't be bothered to properly look through the application pack".

After this rejection we actually made the effort to go to the immigration office to speak to someone but that didn't lead anywhere. They just made up some more stupid new rules on the spot to make us go away. So we decided that we will need some professional help.

The second application was submitted in mid-November after having my tourist visa extended for a fee of roughly US$ 100 at the Extranjería in Santiago. It now additionally featured:

• a neat plastic folder;
• a 2 page cover letter;
• various invoices and recent bank statements showing that Christian's contract really results in shiny £££ materialising into our bank account on a semi-regular basis;
• our rental contract, various bank statements for Patricia's bank account in Chile and receipts showing that between the two of us we are spending our hard earned pesos in Chile and are therefore valuable members of this consumerist society, contributing to economic growth and all that.

By early January, just after we got back from southern Patagonia, we had another rejection letter. This time we were informed that we, once again, failed to provide proof of the foreign income and also should have included a fully legalised copy of Christian's university degree.

Our solicitor, who was equally amused (or annoyed?) about the reasons for refusal, suggested that we should simply re-file the application with the uni title as requested and ignore the other reason and the fact that the uni title had nothing to do with anything at all. The bureaucrats in charge of the application were probably just too busy again to actually properly look through the application, so they had to make up some rejection reasons. When they had looked at the application it was nearly Christmas, after all, and everyone was looking forward to their 2 months of holidaying in Jan and Feb. One shouldn't expect important decisions to be made around that time of the year, lesson learnt!

So while half of Santiago was out on vacation we got Christian another 3 months' worth of tourist via by means of crossing the border to Argentina for a few hours and re-entering Chile one beautiful Saturday in mid-January (view of Aconcagua and some crazy bendy road included, see below).

We also got his uni title legalised, which involved three different steps on the German side (university issued copy of certificate, a state level government office verifying that the copy was genuine, the Chile consulate verifying that the state level government's stamp was genuine) and fourth step on the Chile side (the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores verifying that the consulate stamp was genuine).

By mid Feb we were ready to file again, plastic folder and everything. March must be a good time for taking decisions, bureaucrats being relaxed after their holidays, and so we were third time lucky! With the application approved one then has to follow the below procedure:

1. Get the temporary residency visa "stamped" into the passport (ie: 3 hours waiting in a queue at the Extranjería again)
2. Register with the Policía Internacional (another 2 hours of queuing)
3. Apply for ID card at the local municipality (1 hour queuing)

Steps 2 and 3 have to happen within 30 days of step 1, apparently. Not entirely sure what happens if one fails to do that, though. Christian managed to get all this done despite his somewhat limited Spanish, which shows that once you fall into a certain category which the bureaucrats have procedures for, it's easy. However, if you are outside of those categories, you are in trouble.

In summary: 10 months, 3 applications, half a dozen trips to the various government offices in the centre of Santiago and countless hours of queuing later, Christian is now considered a temporary resident of Chile. This grants him the right to lawfully stay in the country until April of 2013 - no more silly trips to Argentina required! He is furthermore expected to apply for permanent residency prior to the expiration of the temporary residency visa. No doubt that step will turn into a similar epic act of bureaucracy...