Respite from uncertainty (and Migración Colombia’s online system!) with residency
[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]
So after more than 12 years of having Colombia as my main base and ten years of various work visas, I’ve finally managed to get residency.
‘Relax, you’ve got residency now.’
Truth be told, since securing a two-year M visa as an independent worker in 2022, residency wasn’t a major priority.
Revel in residency
An M visa puts one on the road to residency. For most who have such a visa for work reasons, that road is a five-year one i.e. after five years of consecutive M visas — no breaks allowed — one can then apply for residency.
Thus, getting back on an M visa after the weaker V visa (effectively a tourist with official permission to do certain work) I had from 2020 to 2022 meant I was rather relaxed about my situation compared to the more troubling visa-application times in 2020 and 2021 (for some background on all that, see Colombia’s tough love).
Nonetheless, the M visa I had was due to expire in November this year, so I was facing into another nervy renewal process — one just never knows. (After being granted — largely hassle-free — four year-long visas as an independent worker from 2014 to 2018, the process then got more complicated, as I explained in Colombia’s independent work visa: ¿Vale la pena?)
Now, though, with my R visa approved — that’s R for residency, in case you’re not following — a nervy November is less likely. (I’m sure there’ll be something else I’ll be nervous or worried about, it’s just unlikely it’ll be visa-related.)
The biggest benefit of such a visa, as I see it at this stage in any case — no, it’s not that I can now vote in local elections — is that I can leave Colombia for up to two years with no change to my legal status. It might seem strange that I’m highlighting this as a positive after just getting residency but I’m referring to the flexibility/*freedom* it offers. An M visa, in contrast, is invalidated if one is out of Colombia for more than 180 days.
‘I wonder if Migración Colombia is cursed. It did, after all, come into being on Halloween 2011.’
Linked to this, I’ve always had this concern — justified or otherwise — about having difficulties with my bank if I no longer have a valid Foreigner Identification Card, cédula de extranjería. It was with my cédula de extranjería that I opened my current Colombian bank account and they can be quite bureaucratic here about such matters. ‘Oh, the ID you have linked to this account is out of date. We can’t let you access your funds so.’
Flawed system
Bureaucracy and the cédula de extranjería bring us on to Migración Colombia, the entity one goes to for said cédula once the visa department at La Cancillería, the Ministry for Exterior Relations, has granted a visa.
Migración Colombia is under the control of La Cancillería but at times its processes make one feel that it operates in a completely different dimension to the ministry.
In my December 2022 post, Lending Migración Colombia a helping hand, I tried to do just that, lend the body a hand, by highlighting some frustrating flaws in its online system. My article — surprise, surprise — didn’t have the desired effect.
The same blind spots I mentioned back then are still present. Or not present, as it is.
Now, though, in addition to the information-light email replies to users of its services, there are a couple of more headaches — for those dealing with the Bogotá office in any case.
That all in-person procedures, bar picking up a new cédula when it’s ready, must first be booked online isn’t a major deal in itself. It beats, in theory, waiting in line physically. For the Bogotá office, due to demand I surmise, the window to book appointments opens at 5 pm on Sundays and, by all accounts, closes in a matter of hours.
One is thus advised to be ready to enter the booking system as soon as the clock strikes five. The thing is, it seems the system just can’t cope.
System overload.
On the two occasions I had to use it over the last few weeks, the first couple of hours I spent simply trying to enter the website were largely a waste of time. At times it did feel like progress was being made, I’d pass an initial step or two but then the system would crash and I’d have to start all over again.
For fear of missing out on reserving an appointment, especially for registering my R visa and with it applying/paying for a new cédula to reflect my changed circumstances, something that has to be done within 15 calendar days of getting a visa, I didn’t take a break from trying to enter the system.
On reflection, it seems that one would be better off waiting until 7 pm. It was only after that time that I started to make progress. Yet, as mentioned, there’s the fear of entering the system too late. ‘Sorry, all appointments have been booked out for this week.’ There is probably a sweet spot timewise, I’m just not sure where it is.
The Cursed
And now, having completed the process, I don’t really care. As things stand, I won’t have to deal with Migración again, in this sort of way that is, until May 2029. Who knows what my circumstances will be then?
Therein lies another benefit of my R visa: not having to use Migración Colombia’s online system for years to come. I’m fairly sure it’s already taken, if not quite years, certainly months off my life.
Even what had previously been a rather simple procedure, checking if my new cédula was ready, turned out to be more complicated than I remember it before. It took me a long time to find the appropriate online page. In mitigation, I was searching on my phone. Perhaps the website is more easily navigated on a PC or laptop.
I do wonder, though, if Migración Colombia is cursed. Or better said, it puts a curse on those who use its services. It did, after all, come into being on Halloween 2011. Certainly, all the drama I’ve had with it has been akin to some slapstick horror show.
Migración Colombia: A Nightmare on Bogotá’s 100th Street (Calle 100). Box office potential that.
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