Those of you with long memories for insignificant details may remember that in September of last year I reported having difficulties with the Immigration Department regarding a visa for one of our employees from former Yugoslavia: I am pleased to report, finally, that his visa was approved this past Thursday. It was not easy. Because of the paperwork “irregularities” that I mentioned in my September 29 post, the initial visa application was ultimately denied.
Not being one who easily accepts defeat (I’m still saving my Confederate war bonds), the decision was made to hire a first-class immigration attorney to sort through the mess, and solve the problem. The very first thing she did was to find out what went wrong. The answer, from the Immigration Department’s point of view was: everything. Our Uruguay company’s papers were not in order, it’s registered address had changed several times, its stated purpose was inaccurate, and the persons representing the company seemed to have no legal connection to it. When taken together this added up to a severe case of bureaucratic heebie-jeebies.
Being an ignorant gringo I simply didn’t understand that the process was more important than the substance, and that the procedure was more important than the facts. More fool me!
So we did it their way, which is the legal profession’s version of the fallback rule in technology: “RTFM” (read the ******* manual).
Our attorney and our accountant reorganized and regularized all of the documents. The attorney consulted with the immigration officials to determine who they would like to represent our company in discussions with them; and it was agreed that in our accountant was the person to do it. Not only could he unravel and explain the mistakes made by his predecessors, but his charming manner and professional demeanor would appeal to the bureaucrats. It didn’t seem to matter who WE wanted to represent our company, or that our accountant knew nothing whatsoever about the person for whom the visa was being sought, or that everything he told Immigration about that person was a rote recitation of what we had told him: he fit the profile to satisfy the process–and it worked!
I have come to the conclusion that whenever one deals with the government bureaucracy here it is best to find reliable professionals and let them do it! The cost in dollars is miniscule compared to the human toll in high blood pressure, ulcers, stomach aches, headaches, anger and despair for those who try to do it themselves. I suspect that do-it-yourself dental work would be a bit less painful.
Now that our employee has his visa, he has to begin part two of this stylized bureaucratic minuet in order to get his papers legalized so that he can apply for residency.
The problem is this: he lives in Montenegro–there is no Uruguayan consulate in Montenegro, and Uruguay is not a signatory to the international convention on the legalization of documents, which means it does not accept Apostilles (an internationally recognized form of notarization).
In order to get around this problem, he has to do the following:
• get the documents certified by the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry; then
• take the documents to the Argentine consulate in Belgrade, in next door Serbia; where
• the Argentine consulate will legalize the certification of the documents by the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry, and return them to our employee; then
• after he gets here, but he will have to take the documents to the Argentine Foreign Ministry in Buenos Aires; where
• the Argentine Foreign Ministry will confirm the Argentine consulate’s legalization of the certification of the documents by the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry; then
• the documents will be taken to the Uruguayan consulate in Buenos Aires; where
• the Uruguayan consulate will legalize the Argentine Foreign Ministry’s confirmation of the Argentine consulate’s legalization of the certification of the documents by the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry; then
• the documents have to be brought back here, where they are taken to the Foreign Ministry here; then the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry will confirm the legalization by the Uruguayan consulate of the Argentine Foreign Ministry’s confirmation of the Argentine consulate’s legalization of the certification of the documents by the Montenegrin Foreign Ministry; then
• the documents will be submitted to an official translator; after which
• the documents will be notarized; and then
• the documents will finally be submitted to the Immigration Department in support of his residency application.
Now wasn’t that easy?
Are you certain of this?
>> Absolutely! It is not an exageration, though I wish it was…ç
–The Southron
Left by fiberman on January 30th, 2007
hey! southron you sould check how absurd the immigration laws are in the states.
>>Reason 257 why I am not in the States and never expect to be there.
–The Souhtron
Left by southernboy on February 27th, 2007