Pensionado 3 year visa 2018 page 2 - Colombia forum

CanadaDoug · 2018-03-24T16:22:20+01:00

Hey Fred.....the Pensionado Visa I have a nice local contact who is fluent in English. He did the process for me at a small reasonable fee. Together we learned a lot of things. If you actually come to Armenia he will help. If you plan to settle elsewhere then an experienced local contact will be of great help. I don't speak spanish well so I asked my contact to take care of everything for me. Here's what we learned. 1. You HAVE to get a physical letter from your pension provider(s) to show you earn monthly at least twice as much as the average wage earner in Colombia. 2. That letter has to be "Apostilled" (stamped by an official country origin legal service). In the USA that's pretty easy I think. 3. You get "official" passport type photos taken here in Colombia. Cheap, only a few dollars. 4. The Apostilled pension letter IN YOUR HAND! has to be translated into spanish by an approved "Colombian" translator. Much cheaper than a translation letter from an official in the USA. YOU NEED TO BE FLUENT IN SPANISH TO GET THIS DONE BY YOURSELF!!!! That's why I turned everything over to my official licensed Colombian friend. He used his Colombian credit card to pay the necessary government fees online. I just paid him the cash. Maybe if you do it yourself your credit card might work? 5. With those necessary documents the application for the VISA goes ONLINE. Photocopies of the documents are made. Those photocopies (PFD files) are part of your online submission (attachments) to Bogota. When all the "fields" are properly filled out on this initial online application the "accept" button will initiate. If the fields are not filled out properly the "accept" button rejects the application until you get it right. 6. When the "accept" button initiates you will be notified within 5 days (running) whether or not your online application for the three year pensionado visa application HAS BEEN "APPROVED". 7. When you receive the electronic "approval" you have 15 (running) days to get to Bogota AND finally apply in the local area you are in for the special Colombian ID 3 year Visa card (like a cedula). Let me explain. This is a difficult time limit to fully understand. If you go past your time limit you have to pay an additional 500,000 peso fine. When you get the return online "electronic" approval you MUST show up at the "local" (where you are at in Colombia) and apply for the special Colombia ID card they make for the 3 year pensionado Visa. The local immigration "agency" will not process you unless you have the official passport "sticker" from Bogota. Get it??? As soon as you get electronic "approval" of your initial online application get your butt to Bogota for the Visa "sticker" in your passport. Then get your butt back to your local location and apply for the Colombia ID card. You only have 15 running days, not "working" days for this. Time is tight tight tight. 8. The address of the Bogota Immigration (to get your passport Visa "sticker") will be provided to you online. I showed up at the time the office opened 7:30 am. The line wait was two hours. When I got to the first "official" I was processed and out of there in 15 minutes. 9. There a 3 different immigration offices (or more) here in Armenia. Took me a few lost days to find the right one by trial and error. When I did find it I had to apply online again so more days lost. When my Colombian friend successfully got the online application for the plastic card accepted I was 2 days over my 15 day time limit (from the initial "electronic approval"). 10. My Colombian friend knows the people in the immigration offices so he was able to avoid my 500,000 dollar fine with an official "waiver". If you want to process your application from another country I do not know how that would work. You would have to ask an expert. There are specialized companies here in Colombia that can process your application. Here's a link to a visa process company in Medellin www.inter-col.com There are others too. Do the search online to find the locals.

Pensionado 3 year visa 2018

cccmedia Ecuador/Colombia Expert

Member since 13 March 2014

cccmediaEcuador/Colombia Expert21 September 2018 15:38:15

#41

10281

tubes wrote:
The MRE in Bogota require a particular handling of foreign pension documents.
The original English pension confirmation has to be apostilled (at Milton Keynes) and translated by an approved Colombian legal translator, whose credentials have to be confirmed at Bogota.

They may not accept the original document more than once and the whole process has to be repeated for every visa.

If Tubes' above citation is 100 percent correct -- and I have no reason to doubt it -- this is all a first-time visa applicant needs to read in order to decide in favor of employing an immigration attorney or visa facilitator.

My comment applies to 90 percent-plus of all 暗网禁区s.聽 The remaining few percent are those who either are fluent in Spanish legalese or somehow can master the challenge of dealing with a bureaucratic maze in the absence of expert assistance.

cccmedia

Captnflex Active member

Member since 19 December 2017

CaptnflexActive member08 April 2019 01:14:00

#42

For Canadians looking for:
Authenticating a document is free. It proves that the signature, the position of an official and the seal on a certified document are genuine. Other jurisdictions or countries will recognize your authenticated document as a valid copy.

Authentication is also called legalization or apostille.

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