New Immigration Laws and Foreign Residency Lawyers
Posted by Dwayne under DR Tips , Santo Domingo[9] Comments
With the latest set of immigration laws that have been passed in the Dominican Republic many “staycationers” are finding that if they want to stay here (at least legally) they need to get residency. While I’m not a lawyer you might find my recent experiences with the immigration office to be useful.
New laws passed in January 2012
First, what has changed? In the past when a foreigner first came to the DR they needed to buy a tourist visa. That pretty much meant that you walk up to a counter, pay $10 US dollars to get a little card. You then walk across the room and give the card to someone else and go on your way. This tourist visa was good for the next 30 days. This appears to still be the same. One thing that has changed is if you were charged the tourist tax or tourist visa with your plane ticket and you are exempt you can get a refund. Dominican Republic refunds of Tourist Card Visa
After 30 days you then went to the immigration office and paid for a 3 month extension. This extension started when you first entered into the country so you actually pay for that 30 days twice. Now that you have your extension you are good for another 2 months. You could purchase the 3 month extension 2 more times for a total of 9 months. You now had to leave the country to get your passport stamped and you start the process over again.
This has now changed. You still start with your 30 day tourist visa, but now at the end of your month when you apply for the extension you have to also get a physical. What used to take an hour or so now can take most of a day. Also, you can only get 1 extension before you are required to leave the country.
Foreign Residency
While for many “staycationers” it seemed a viable option to go the route of an extended tourist, that route doesn’t work to well now that you are going to have to leave the country every 3 months. That means foreign residency turns into the better option.
The process is a bit of a pain, but is still much easier that if you were trying to do the same in the US. Whether you choose to hire a immigration lawyer or not depends on how much work you are willing to do yourself. To have the lawyer do all the work including the payments to the immigration office costs at least $1000 US dollars, this is the price when they take you through with a group in a bulk situation. If you want personal treatment it is going to cost a bit more.
Either way plan to spend most do a day in the immigration office in Santo Domingo. First you fill out the paperwork, pay the fees, submit to a blood test, urine test and as chest x-ray and stand in line to start the process of turning in the paperwork.
Later you will need to finish remaining paperwork (birth certificates, marriage certificates, and good conduct letters all of which need to have a apostille, is needed), have it translated into Spanish and then turn that in. On the final trip you pickup your card and pay the final $200. At this point you are good for a year.
After a year passes you will need to more or less start over again. While you don’t need to come up with the marriage cert, birth cert and good conduct letters again, it would appear the rest of the visit to the immigration office will be the same at a similar cost. This process repeats goes on for 3 years (including the first visit). On the last year you will actually be applying for permanent residency. Once accepted this will last for 5 years before you need to renew.
Ah, the joys of living in paradise! So, if you are planning on living in the DR for longer than a month, prepare to visit the Immigration office on a regular basis. While you can do all of the residency paperwork on your own, an immigration lawyer makes it a lot easier and will save you a lot of time and anxiety (dealing with government offices here is even more frustrating than in the States). I chose to use a lawyer for my family and for me it was worth the couple hundred extra dollars.
March 14th, 2013 at 11:39 am
I HAVE A FRIEND WHO IS A RESIDENT OF THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC IS SEEKIG A 90 DAY TOUR VISA WITH EXTENTSION.COULD YOU SEND ME ANY AGENCY OR LAW FIRM THAT CAN HANDLE THIS FOR HER AND I’LL PASS THIS INFORMATION ON TO HER.
PLEASE SEND NAME AND ALL CONTACT NUMBERS FOR HER TO CALL AND THE TOTAL COST FOR HER IN HER SON.
THANK YOU,
STANLEY HOWARD,
March 15th, 2013 at 11:40 am
@Stanley
This is the company I used to get my residency. They would problably be a good place to start.
HOLT & ABREU IMMIGRATION SERVICES
http://www.immigrationdr.net
April 28th, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Hello, so I assume you and your family are currently still living in DR. Some of questions I would like to ask.
Do you own or rent your home?
When you travel back to US who watches over your home?
Do you support yourselves by working a job out there?
If so, do both you and your wife have to work?
Thanks for your help
April 29th, 2013 at 6:10 am
@dmaximus
Yep, still living here and after about a year and a half (after we finally started the residency process) still waiting for the Immigration office to finish up with our residency (but we’re legal and that’s what counts).
In answer to your questions. We rent a place here in the DR. In our case we have a very good landlord that runs a colmodo below our place and lives right next door. He is constantly watching over our stuff including our pasola and motorcycle. For us we just tell him that we will be gone for a month or two and that we have some friends stopping by to check our cat at times. He knows our friends and will stop anyone he does know so our stuff is pretty safe. Others I know will have someone they know house sit while they are gone.
Work… That can be a bit tougher. I have a computer programming business that I started in the States. I do the work over the internet which works pretty fair. So for me, I’m able to support my family by myself. Most (almost all) of our friends have some sort of work outside the country conducted by internet or by traveling back to their home country every year for a few months to find work and save enough money to come back. If you don’t already have internet work, likely your biggest asset is your ability to fluently speak a foreign language (that is unless you only speak Spanish). I know people that have started up small classes to teach English here (at 50 to 150 pesos per person it takes a few people to make it worth while), others get online teaching positions using Skype.
May 6th, 2013 at 6:54 am
There has been quite a few inquiries from parents wondering about schooling for their children. While I’ve touched on it a few times in several posts here is an article directly related to Dominican Schools. Dominican Republic Schools
May 20th, 2014 at 9:06 pm
Just thought I’d mention a tip for potential needgreaters, I’ve been here w/my family for about 18 months and have been going through residency challenges. The branch will supply a list of lawyers and expediters that can “help” with the process. Holt & Abreu were on the list when we were making our arrangements to come here. But everyone that I’ve spoken to that has worked with them (I believe they’re now 2 separate firms), has had SERIOUS ISSUES, DON’T USE THEM. There’s another sister on the list named Maria Crisostomo (sp?) that has received fair reviews from most friends I’ve spoken with. The branch also gives really good encouragement and advice, it’s definitely a good idea to contact them through your congregation’s Service Committee.
June 4th, 2014 at 6:34 am
I’m not sure that a recommendation to not use them is particularly warranted. We’ve been here for about 5 years now and have been working with them over the last three. There are three possible issues that I can see with them, these are the same that most of people I have talked to with have mentioned. Communication, price and how long it takes.
Communication can be a bit of a problem but not what I would call a serious issue.
Price? hard to say. much of the price goes to fees to the government. They also hand hold you through the whole process sometimes needing three people or more helping with the group. Something to also understand, nothing in this country ever goes smoothly and any confusion what so ever causes delays. For example one of the notaries in the US used a different color ink than was expected by immigration here, This caused the need to talk with the agency here multiple times to try and clear it up and eventually needing to have a document redone in the states. Holt & Abreu took care of this without me being part of it.
Time to completion? Once again nothing ever goes smoothly here. After they finally got every thing accepted by the immigration office and we received a notice that immigration had everything they needed, it took almost a year before we actually received our Cedula and residency, this delay could only be attributed to the immigration office.
At this point the branch is recommending them and has been using them for many years. While I can’t say whether one of the other people on the list would be faster, cheaper or easier to work with (I’ve only used Holt) I’m pretty sure a “DON’T USE THEM” recommendation is not a fair.
June 5th, 2014 at 10:10 pm
I appreciate the fact that you didn’t delete my response. I think it’s important that potential needgreaters get the pros/cons as they prepare to come over. My comments are intended to provide a first-hand account based on my personal experience and feedback I’ve received from others that have dealt with this firm in the recent past (both needgreaters and Dominicans).
I am not sure if it’s fair to say that branch is “recommending” them. I believe what they have said is that they’re a firm they’ve used in the past. Granted, I may be splitting hairs here – but it’s a subtle (but important) difference. In fact, I’m not sure if they’re still providing the list to potential needgreaters (a brother I know didn’t receive the list in the info packet he recently received). I guess what each individual/family needs to ask themselves is how important communication is to them. In fairness, it has been my experience that the communication style in dealing w/firms in the DR is very different compared to firms in the US (I believe both principles in the firm in question have lived in the US, so perhaps my expectations are higher than they would be if I were dealing w/a team that didn’t never lived in the States). I mention this because maybe communication would be a challenge with any other lawyer from the list (or from off the list). However it is hard to imagine that any other firm could possibly be as non-responsive to emails as this team has been.
June 6th, 2014 at 11:16 am
I agree, pros/cons are best before making a decision. And yes, likely “recommending” is probably not the right word. 🙂 Usually the society doesn’t “recommend” businesses.
The last packet that I personally know of was about 6 months ago. I am assuming they are still sending them but I can’t confirm that. They still had Holt on the list at this time along with another company. The other company never did reply to the our friends email so she went with the Holts. Best I can say to anyone else reading this is to pick the one that seems most responsive, and best price and be patient.
Here’s another thing to be patient about when working with the cedula. It turns out that even when you get your card from immigration, it is not in the system. You legal, you have a number, but when you try to use it with Claro or to get a Dominican drivers licence they tell you it is not there. Apparently it takes 6 or more months after the residency process is complete and you get your two cards (residency and cedula) for the DR to get it officially put in the system so it can be used by other organizations including the DR version of the US DMV. There is a way of expediting that but it takes going to a couple different government offices to do it.