The long and difficult way towards the argentinian residence permit

Today we are going to talk about the most famous cooking recipe currently been served in Buenos Aires restaurants: the Spanish guy baked in the argentinian way!

Ingredients

From the Spanish guy:

• Criminal record in his country
• Birth certificate from his country
• Criminal record in Argentina
• Passport and copies of all its pages
• 600 argentinian pesos, bah just a bit more than 100 euros, nothing. A few months ago the price was 200 pesos but, you know, we gringos are nice people and don’t mind been ripped off if we can help the country with that.
• Two pictures

From the company hiring him:

• Certificate of been included in the foreigns solicitors registry.
• Signed work contract

It looks easy, isnt it? Well, it took me five months to get the recipe done. There was always some missing ingredient or a bad quality one or an outdated one… The most complicated one were definitely the birth certificate and the criminal record since they had to come all the way from Spain and… they had to be apostilled. Funny word, what the fuck does this mean? Lets ask Wikipedia:

Apostille is also a French word which means a certification. It is commonly used in English to refer to the legalization of a document for international use under the terms of the 1961 Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents. Documents which have been notarized by a notary public, and certain other documents, and then certified with a conformant apostille are accepted for legal use in all the nations that have signed the Hague Convention.

Clear, isn’t it? Basically, the certificate has to carry a sort of stamp proving its authenticity. Apparently it is not enough with the signature of the office, they need some legal proof on top of that. All right, let’s see where to get this thing…

The birth certificate

I was born on a distant 8th of September, 1980 in Seville, south of Spain. It seems to be very necessary for the migration guys to have a paper saying this so I gotta get a way to get it from Argentina. Google tells me this can be asked online and it will be delivered to Argentina. Great, I submit the form and wait for the paper. Days pass, then weeks, then months. It does not arrive.

Since I need that birth certificate before they have to produce the death one, I take advantage of a visit my mother pays to my family in Seville and tells her to get it there. First person involved in this issue. Apparently you don’t get this immediately, it takes a few days till my mother can collect the paper… with no apostille. When she asks for this she is told the apostille thing can only be done in Granada, by the Supreme Justice Court. Unfortunately Granada is not on her way back home so the fucking paper gets to Madrid with no apostille.

Anyway, I tell her to send it among with the criminal record some other person asked for me in Madrid (next chapter). I want to give it a try, see if it works like that. I have my appointment with the migration office in two weeks so I need the papers to be here fast. My father gets them to the post office and hires the most expensive an urgent service (second person involved)

In theory they should arrive in BA in just four days. In fact it takes three weeks so I miss my appointment. Checking the online tracking system I can see they were, according to the plan, in Argentina after two days but then got freezed there for more than two weeks, who knows why. I have to ask for a new appointment and I get it for the next month. So all this time I will remain been a illegal inmigrant paid in black and with no medical insurance.

The papers finally get to Buenos Aires so right now I have one criminal record apostilled and one birth certificate without the apostille. This means, I have got all the ingredients for the dish but one of them is low quality. I phoned migrations just for them to tell me not to bother going there, that it wont work, no apostille, no good… During these days I get a letter, remember the birth certificate I ordered online? Well, it finally arrived…unapostilled. How cruel… at this moment I have with me two birth certificates I got through different ways but both of them equally useless.

A few days after this, I travel to Madrid. I took this opportunity to show up at the Central Registry of Spain hoping I will get my apostilled birth certificate there. I believe that, been in the 21st Century, it wont be necessary for Spanish central authorities to ask any paper from Seville or Granada. Meeek! Wrong! You can only get the birth certificate in Seville (550 km away from Madrid) and the apostille in Granada (260 km from Sevilla and 400 km from Madrid). So.. what the fuck am I gonna do now? Should I take a car and start my southern Spain tour? No way, there is just no time, I would need to go to Seville, wait for four days to get the birth certificate, then go to Granada and wait another bunch of days there. The guy at the Central Registry in Madrid says that if they ask for the paper it will probably take a couple of months and they cant guarantee they will get it with the apostille. Great…

At that moment I look to the past and think of Lolo, one of my best friends during my Erasmus year in Newcastle. No wonder we got along so well cause we are very similar guys. Lolo is a very social guy, party animal, very into alcohol and women and… he is from Granada! As far as I know he still lives there so I immediately phone him. No problem, Lolo will do the fucking apostille thing (third person involved). I just need to get one my two birth certificates delivered to him. However, since I am a fucking retarded, I didn’t think of bringing any of them with me to Madrid (first big fuck-up on my side). So I am forced to ask Sole in Buenos Aires to send Lolo one of my two birth certificates. Fourth person involved.

Last week an envelope arrived to my work. A beautiful birth certificate apostilled according to the fucking Hague convention. This thing, my friends, is not just a simple paper, is a fucking legend. My birth certificate has seen a lot of the world. It traveled from Seville to Madrid and then it flew to Buenos Aires where it stayed for a while. Then it crossed the Atlantic again and went to Granada on a round trip. I am going to be sad about giving it away, it is like an old friend.

The criminal record

This paper you can get it in Madrid so I ask my good friend Elena (fith people involved) to show up at the Central Criminal Registry to order it. First try is no good, the crappy authorization I wrote in Word for her is not enough. I have to go to the Spanish embassy in Buenos Aires and send an official request from there. Fortunately this travels by fax so Elena can get the paper after a few days, on time to put it in that enveloped I mentioned before, the one that got stuck in the argentinian post office. She also made sure the thing had the apostille so everything ok so far. I get to see the paper and surprisingly I have an empty criminal record, cool.

Lets now move forward in time… I went and came back from Madrid and I am waiting for that birth certificate Lolo got apostilled. I have my appointment in migrations next week. In theory everything is fine but I am a bit unconfident about the validity of my criminal record certificate. I have heard some worrying things that I get confirmed when I phone the migrations office and my worse suspects become true. My criminal record certificate is useless. Since after they produced it I went to Madrid and was there for a couple of weeks is not valid anymore. This has some logic if you think about it, I could have commited a few crimes in that period. Maybe it would have been very intelligent to get a new one right the day before I departed from there, don’t you think so? Second big fuck up on my side.

So here I am, back in the beginning of this issue. With my appointment in migrations in less than ten days, a apostilled birth certificate still to come and a criminal record that is here and apostilled but not valid anymore. Once again, the ingredients are not good. If I have to authorize someone for the criminal record thing and get that person to send it to me via post it will never be here on time, no way. In this moment I have another happy idea. Javo is a great guy I knew when I was working for ICEX in Stockholm. He was sent to Bucharest and I paid him a visit there. We also had a few nights out in Madrid, some trips and… Javo is coming to visit Buenos Aires next week… Great, just in time to bring me a brand new criminal record. I run to the Spanish embassy and get him an authorization to collect the paper. Sixth person involved.

The appointment is next Tuesday. Today is Thursday and Javo says he got the thing and he is flying to BA tonight. Everything seems to be fine until I start thinking… I realize I didn’t tell him to make sure the paper has the apostille. I said this to the guy in the Embassy so it should have it but I didn’t ask Javo to make sure they finally did it. And, again worst suspects become true. The fucking paper is not fucking apostilled. I curse everybody in the world at this point, starting with me, fucking retarded, unable to remember such a simple thing: certificate – apostille, apostille – certificate. How can it be possible I forget to remark this detail after all my experience? Back in that time, I told Elena to make sure they put the apostille thing, why the fuck didn’t I do the same with Javo? I am stupid.

It is an absurd situation in which you feel like send everything to hell. I am going to have two criminal record certificates. One apostilled but out of date, the other one valid but unapostilled. I could make a good one out of the two and I really consider this option. Maybe I could stick the back of one to the other. If I don’t do this I have to ask for a new appointment, go to the embassy, send another authorization, send another person to pick up and send to me a third certificate… Very demoralizing. Just that day I receive the birth certificate Lolo had sent to me. I consider this a very cruel joke from the destiny. “ey mate! Here you finally have your apostilled birth certificate, ups, how sad, now you don’t have the criminal record”.

There is only one fast solution to this mess. It happens to be that Javo is flying with an Iberia free ticket so his trip that Thursday depends on whether there are free seats on the place. If the plane is full he will have to fly next day and will have time to get the fucking apostille on Friday morning. I don’t wish my friend to loose one day of his holidays but, well, it would save my ass… So I wait to see what is going on and, after not having news from him that night I assume he is already flying and next morning I will have to go again to the embassy and get Elena to collect a third criminal record certificate. I wake up that Friday and check my email to find bad/good news. Javo didn’t make it to BA. Apparently he was even in the plane but there had been some booking problems and he had to go home. Sorry mate but… uffff…

What I didnt like that much is that Javo couldn’t make it next day either and there was no flight the next one. The situation gets a bit tense again. There is only one more chance, if have does not arrive here on Monday I have to change the appointment again…Fortunately the third was the good one and Javo made it to Buenos Aires three days after planned but with a criminal record certificate totally valid and apostilled.

Defeating burocracy

Tuesday I show up once again in “Direccion General de Migraciones de la República Argentina”, avda Antártida Argentina. I have a thick envelope full of certificates, photocopies, apostilles and all the required shit. My boss is coming with me with another bunch of papers he needs to enter his company in the registry for hiring foreing workers.

My hope of getting out of there that same day with the residence card vanish quickly. Just the time it take to them to tell me the inscription in that registry cant be done that same day but takes a couple of days. Fuck, I knew it. The previous week I had asked to my boss a few times “are you sure this thing wont take a few days?” They were sure it could be done that same day… Mistake. Besides, the trip has been in vain, there is one paper and an extra manager signature from their side missing. I have to ask for a new appointment, once again…

I didnt get too pissed off at this point though. First because I know I have all I need, second because I get the new appointment just next week. Suddenly it seems not so many people is asking for residence, who knows why…My boss goes there next day with the missing paper and all seems to be fixed so next visit will be the definitive one.

Tuesday, 11th of August, once again on my way to migrations, not been very optimistic, I am sure something will fuck up again. The guy in the desk does not waste smiles and breaks my balls from the beginning. Why the number in the criminal record certificate is not the same one as in my passport; cause it is the Spanish Id, fortunately I have it with me. How many countries I have lived in the last 5 years; I suffer a temporal amnesia attack and forget to mention England, Germany, Denmark and Sweden (I don’t even want to imagine how hard getting criminal record for all these places would have been). Some company paper is still missing; surprisingly he is so nice to download it from the Internet… All this time I am really tense waiting to see what the next stupid detail is… but no! No more problems! He just collects the two pictures and the money and produces wonderful residence card for me… Oh yeah! I got it! But, to be honest, it pissed me off a bit that he didnt bother too much checking the famous apostille thing. Actually I have the nasty feeling hat he didn’t even had a look at the back of the criminal record certificate to find it. I nearly shouted him to do it, after all I had to go through to get that. Bastard…

So, how great, I am a bit more argentinian now. And I am closer to be a civilized person, with a bank account and not storing his money in a sock. There is still some shit to go through but this first step was the most complicated one. Allow me to finish this very heay post by saying thank you to a bunch of people: my parents (both of them), Elena, Sole, Lolo and Javo.. And of course my bosses who helped me in all this. This is the result of all the effort.

Paco, master of disaster

The whole post actually.

Tags: Personal