Thursday, November 20, 2008

Jim's an official Permanent Resident of Brazil



It's official - well, almost. My petition for a Permanent Resident Visa from the Brazilian government has been approved!

It took a while. We started this back in May. We hooked up with an immigration lawyer and submitted all our paperwork. Then month after month there were new requests from Brasilia for this document or that. Once we had exhausted all their requests we waited for a hearing. Month after month the hearing was postponed.

No big deal now. It's in the bag. Actually, the approval has to be printed in Diário Official do Brasil. Then the ink dries.

But our worries that approval would somehow be denied are gone. I am now free to come and go as I please. Next step is to obtain my "Carteira de Estrangeiro" - it's the Brazilian ID for foreigners.

All in all it was a pretty short period of time compared to some others. We really had great legal assistance and advocacy.

3 comments:

brooke said...

WOO HOO! So exciting--congrats!

M said...

Hey Jim. Not too familiar with blogs and I just posted a comment asking you if you were still waiting for your visa...
I am in the same situation as you were a few months ago and I should be going to the Policia Federal next week to do my application. Could you tell me how long it took from actually handing everything in until the date you got the approval?
What kind of other documents did Brasilia ask you to provide? (I am only providing those required on the form which I was given by the Policia Federal)
Mathieu

M said...

PS: my email is mathieu.loiseau@gmail.com