Colombia Forum

cafetero
Joined 2015
Posts: 2328

6 years ago

New Thread for new Visas

6 years ago

I seem to be obsessing with this new visas stuff, but I am curious how it will all pan out and I am curious what conniptions we will have to go through to get what we need for our visa.

I just heard from an expat who has hit a snag in his process of application for the 3-year pensionado visa. Apparently it is no longer possible to have the Social Security Benefits letter legalized except by the Federal Benefits Unit in Costa Rica. We are waiting to hear what they will charge for providing this service.

A little background. Up until spring of 2017 the Federal Benefits Unit in Bogota would translate and apostille the benefits letter for free. Just mail it to them and receive it back translated and stamped a few days later. Very simple and pain free.

That all stopped in March 2017 and they instituted a new policy that you had to pay $50 USD and you had to go there in person.

That practice stopped in October 2017 when the Federal Benefits Unit in Bogota was closed and the whole thing was turned over to Federal Benefits Unit in the US Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica. This is apparently part of the 1/3 reduction in State Department staff and funding that has been making headlines recently.

In the mean time, the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Bogota (MRE) was accepting either a Apostilled translated document from US State Department Embassy, OR the MRE would accept a LEGALIZED translation and stamp from one of the authorized translators in each of the states of Colombia.

There is a list of Official Translators. Go to the MRE web page at http://cancilleria.gov.co and click on Visas then scroll to the bottom in the blue background footnotes and click on Official Translators,
Then fill out the form for language, state and city and you will find the list of official translators in your state. For example there are five official translators in Pereira, Risaralda.
These official translators were charging 70,000 pesos for the translation and the Legalization stamp and the newly created document was being accepted as part of the visa application at MRE Bogota. Easy and virtually pain free.

Apparently, now, MRE is no longer accepting this Legalization process and is insisting that the social security benefits letter can only be translated and stamped at the US Embassy. And, since the FBU Bogota is closed, we expats in Colombia have to contact FBU San Jose, Costa Rica.

So, we are in a learning curve, shake down period, and we are guinea pigs. Anyone applying for a visa right now is on the frontier so to speak.

Good luck every body.

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