Some people have asked me for an update on my visa situation. Nothing much to report. I’m here legally (thankfully) and am waiting on two things. The first was the civil registry wouldn’t accept the copy of my birth certificate since it did not list my parents’ names. I sent for another official copy from the mother land and that has arrived so we just have to have it translated and submit it to the civil registry so they can issue my Uruguayan birth certificate.

The second paperwork we’re waiting on is my FBI statement of no criminal record. I had it done before I left the motherland (went to the local Seattle police, got fingerprinted, and sent the request to the FBI). What I didn’t do was have the Uruguayan consulate legalize it before leaving the USA. That’s being done now. Once these two minor issues are taken care of I will receive my official cedula, or national ID card.

I posted the following as a reply to a comment on one of my earlier posts. I’m including it here since others may be interested.

Sorry for taking so long to respond to your comment. There is a different class of visa for investors (anyone who invests over US$100,000 either in real estate or by opening an account at the Bank of the Republic). I believe there are benefits to that class of visa but I’m not sure what they are exactly. One thing I’ve heard is that you’re able to import a car tax free which with my type of visa, rentista, (income from outside of the country) I’d have to pay some huge tax on the import of a car. Plus with the investor’s visa there are restrictions on what you can do with that $100,000 for x number of years. The rentista visa process here isn’t really too complicated and the government doesn’t deny visas arbitrarily. They do want all of the paperwork to be in order which is why I used a visa consultant (highly recommended if you are not fluent in Spanish).