La residencia (parte una)- English version

So here we are,
It has now been 2 weeks that we've been living here in Guayaquil, to start one of the most important step of our trip:

The residency process.

Warning: this blog will make your head turn. Keep in mind that we're living that for real!

In fact, the main theme of our two next blogs is: patience!

Let's step back few months in order to make a summary of our "road to the visa".

First step: Ecuadorian consulate in Montreal

In Canada, we applied for the"negocios" visa (12IX) of 6 months length. Our goal being to buy land and build an ecotouristic farm; therefore, an enterprise.

For the government, that would translates into "negocios" which is commercial exchange and investment.

The consulate of Ecuador in Montreal made us gather lots of paperwork to notarize and translate.

Documents we had to gather and their prices:

Quite expensive? Not that much if we're talking about potential residency. Mainly, the Ecuadorian consulate in Montreal assured us that we would be able to extend our visa upon arrival.
That extension was the magic key to residency.
Well it wasn't!
Our first visit to the government told us that things would be more complicated than that!
Our "negocios" visa (12-IX) couldn't be extended nor could it help to get our residency!

Back to the beginning.

We still don't get how an investor could build and put into action their business plan within 180 days but it sounded like the only option we could find.
Unless we decide to aim for residency. Which is what we decided to trigger here, in Guayaquil.

Second step: Collect of information

List and preliminary comprehension of ecuadorian residency visas:

Therefore, we understood that our best shot would be the visas 9-II and 9-III.

Because we came to invest;
Because we want to grow stuff;
Because buying land is real estate.

But: We learned that if you buy land with that visa, you can't make any change or alteration to it (hence build a house, start a garden) for a year!

But: We learned that we have to deposit a minimum of 3000$ in a state bank account and if we don't invest the full investment amount (25 000$ to 30 000$) within the next 180 days, we could lose our deposit and visa!

We thank our parents who teached us that contacts are better than anything else. Our little 2 month trip was worth it on many levels. Internet and embassies are complicated and fastidious informations are worth nothing next to the personal experience of people we met.
We met Andres at Rio Muchacho who became ecuadorian through the 9-II visa. That nice man bought 25 000$ worth of state bonds with 6% return per year. So not only does he get his residency out of it, the interest also covers his year expenses!
This is wonderful, unbelievable!

Yes, but...
If Andres wants to work in Ecuador, invest in Ecuador, get tan in Ecuador, is residency is conditional; the 25 000$ has to stay untouched. Because, any withdrawal from that investment would cancel his residency!

Then, we met Araceli from La Chocolata in Mompiche. Her husband and herself (two argentinians) made Ecuador their home a year ago and got easily their residency through the profesional Visa 9-V.

I'm sorry, what?
Are you telling us that you don't need to be member of a profesional order to apply for that visa?
You're telling us that all that is needed is university degree?

....
Or almost!

We will give you the process step for our residency in the next blog.
Meanwhile, we enjoy the boring view from our fancy appartment in the middle of Urdesa central in Guayaquil!