Months and months ago I reported that the only thing holding up my permanent residency here in Uruguay was the legalization of my FBI report. Well, it’s still outstanding. The people I had helping me with my visa didn’t have any luck (I’m trying to be nice here) getting it legalized so I requested all of my papers back from them.

Here’s the scoop. You can either get the FBI report done yourself in the USA before you leave like I did or wait until you get to Uruguay and go to Interpol in Montevideo.

Option 1) Do it yourself — go to your local police department and tell them you need fingerprints taken to request an FBI report for yourself. They’ll charge you a few dollars, get your hands all dirty, and you walk out of there with a card covered in fingerprint ink. You then send that to the FBI office in West Virginia with a check (I think it was US$18). If you have a crime-free background they’ll mail the same card back to you with a “No Arrest Record” stamp on the back. Before you leave the US you have to have it legalized by sending the card to the Uruguayan consulate that serves your state of residency along with a certified check for US$42 and a return postage paid envelope (they prefer DHL). This is the step I didn’t do which has held everything up for me. The last step after you received the legalized card back is to have it translated by an official translator here in Uruguay.

If you check the FBI Web site they say how many weeks it can take to process your request. They also say that if you have a time deadline because of travel or whatever to write that on the outside of the envelope and they’ll do their best to process before your requested date. They were true to their word when I did mine. I only had about five weeks before I left Seattle and they got it back to me before the date I wrote on the envelope.

Option 2) Interpol Montevideo — You can go to Interpol here in Montevideo where they’ll take your fingerprints. [I haven’t done this so I’m piecing it together from what I’ve heard so if anybody has more accurate information please post it here.] They’ll give you an envelope already addressed to the FBI. You have to include the FBI’s fee in the envelope. I’m not sure how much Interpol charges for this service nor am I sure if you have to pay the round-trip postage or DHL expense additionally.

Some people have said that the Interpol route doesn’t take too long. JP just called the UY consulate in NYC and they said that doing it through Interpol could take up to six months whereas sending it yourself to an Uruguayan consulate is just a matter of days.

One advantage I’ve heard of the Interpol route is that you don’t have to have the report translated and the return envelope goes directly to immigration here in MVD. Translation costs about UY$68 (less than three dollars).

If anybody has any experience with the Interpol method please share it since I’m not sure how accurate what I wrote is. Doing it in the US myself was pretty painless. I just wish I had had it legalized before leaving the US. I didn’t know about that requirement or I would have. When I sent my birth certificate to the UY consulate in NYC to be legalized the got it back to me very quickly so I believe them when they say they’ll process it within a day of receiving the request.

Also, don’t be afraid to call the consulates in the US. Everyone I’ve spoken with (NYC) or dealt with in person (in Miami) has been extremely helpful, polite, and courteous. JP just hung up the phone with both the NYC consulate and the Los Angeles consulate and both were very informative and helpful.

We’re off to DHL now to send the FBI report to Los Angeles. Hopeful next week I’ll report here on the blog that it came back without issue — I’m the eternal optimist!!