Ecuador Forum

nondescripthalfbaloon
Joined 2022
Posts: 32

1 year ago

* Prepare visa documents IN ECUADOR

1 year ago

Lots of people go back to the US to get all their documents prepared before applying for a visa here in Ecuador. Why?

I've read that people will fly back from Ecuador back to the US to get all the documents they need. Then come back to Ecuador to apply for their visa. I've even read horror stories of folks having to fly back to the US twice. But I don't understand why.

It seems to me that everything would be cheaper (translations, apostilles, notaries, copies, etc) here in Ecaudor. Except maybe postage. But postage should be *much* cheaper than a round-trip flight, no?

The one item that stands-out as the most difficult to me is the background check. But I was reading through the FBI website, and it seems that you can order it online, and then they mail it to you. It costs $18 and takes 3-5 days. I guess the most difficult thing here is that you have to mail them your fingerprints. But that shouldn't be too difficult. Also, I've done this process for an FBI report outside the US before, but with an agency that sent them digital scans of my fingerprints. Surely there's some place here that will do the digital fingerprint scans for as much as it costs to mail them from Ecuador (and wayy less than a flight back to the US)?

* https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/identity-history-summary-checks

Is there something else that I'm missing that's more difficult to get inside of Ecuador?

Has any other US Americans had experience preparing all the necessary documents to apply for a 2-year visa entirely inside Ecuador?

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