Uruguay Forum

Norm123
Joined 2010
Posts: 5

14 years ago

getting Uruguay Passport

14 years ago

April 7, 2010
Getting a Passport, any problems?
Norm123

My wife and I are considering moving to Uruguay. We are both American citizens but have not lived in the US for over 25 years. During that time we spent a lot of time just traveling around exploring the world and looking for paradise. We found that paradise would take combining several places together to achieve.

We finally settled on Australia as we kept going back there and really liked it. We got retirement status after meeting their requirements, built a house and lived in it for 12 years. Then Australia decided they were no longer going to continue their retirement visa and discontinued it. We were grandfathered in, but it had to be renewed every two years, on the next renewal they required a ton of paperwork and said it could be denied in the future. Anyhow it felt like it was time to move on to a place that would feel more permanent.

We checked out Panama as we had read a lot about it, and it sounded good. In researching it we never found an area that felt like we would really like to live here. So we decided on our second choice, which was Thailand. We had been to Thailand on many occasions and enjoyed it. We moved there 4 years ago and rented a house for a year and then bought a nice condo on the beach 2 hours from Bangkok. We enjoy Thailand and the good points outweigh the bad but they are now having political problems and tend to change the immigration laws frequently.

So we think it would be nice to live in a place where we could feel permanent. Uruguay does give permanent residency and allows a couple to get a passport after 3 years residency. Our question is has anyone done this and is it difficult and expensive. We feel once you have a passport they are not apt to change the rules on you. Or is that wishful thinking?

Then there comes the question of what to ship to Uruguay. Obviously we will ship nothing until we have spent enough time there to be sure it is the place for us. But I always like to plan ahead. It sounds like the cost of most things there are high and the quality is somewhat lacking. My first impression is to get a 40 foot container and ship it all. Then the wife shows me an article about the cost of ownership. And when I stop and think about it, every time we move we ship it all, and every time we move we need a bigger place to hold all of our Stuff. So over the years we have accumulated stuff that has not been out of the box for 20 years, we just don’t have the heart to dispose of some of it. Like family photos that we have trunks full of. We never look at them but can’t bring ourselves to trash them. My wife is an avid reader and rarely will part with one. We have 8 large bookcases, many shelves double stacked so you can’t tell what is in back. I think she would rather give up one of the kids than give up her books. Quite a few years back I got into making fishing lures and ended up buying more parts, hooks fur etc. than you can imagine to make them with. I have cabinet after cabinet full of lure making and tube fly parts that take up a massive amount of space. Have spent many many hours making lures but rarely go fishing.

That’s just the top of the iceberg for stuff. But then part of the decision making process. So do we sell it here or haul it to Uruguay and sell it there for a better (I hope) price. It is difficult to sell things here as the average Thai only makes about 250USD a month.
The biggest downside to having so much stuff is room for it all. Much of it sits in a storage room. But I will get down there and go through it soon. The golf clubs that we haven’t used in 25 years and the bicycles whose tires are probably rotted by now have thousands of shipping miles on them. But hey we keep talking about riding them. Uruguay looks like a great biking country maybe we should take them along.

I think I have gotten carried away on this I just intended to ask about getting a passport after 3 years. Sorrry

I do have a few questions about which locations to research, but will put that in another post. Don’t want this to become a book.

Regards to all.
Norm and Luanna

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Contribute
Help others in Uruguay by answering questions about the challenges and adventures of living in Uruguay.