S. American Visas
This trip to Brazil has been fraught with visa nuisances. I simply cannot understand why Brazil and Argentina (only for non-US citizens) require people to come in person on two different days (two weeks apart) to the consulates to get their visas. And of course, there're no consulates in Seattle.
We were lucky there's a Brazilian consulate in SF, so we could appoint someone to go in our stead. We know no one in LA, so some of our party who need Argentinian visas, will not be able to go to Argentina for the few hours that it takes to view the Iguassu falls from that side.
And the applications themselves have required notarized copies of things, we had to go to the County office to get an official birth certificate for Wee, Hubby had to ask his company to expedite the production of his employment verification letter, and so on and so forth. This is a mere tourist visit of less than two weeks, not a permanent resident application.
We've traveled to various countries in the world, but have never had such a hassle as this has proved to be. It's almost as if the countries want to discourage tourists. And how in the world is Brazil going to scale up it's arcane process to meet the demand of tourists for the 2014 World Cup Soccer and the 2016 Olympics?
We were lucky there's a Brazilian consulate in SF, so we could appoint someone to go in our stead. We know no one in LA, so some of our party who need Argentinian visas, will not be able to go to Argentina for the few hours that it takes to view the Iguassu falls from that side.
And the applications themselves have required notarized copies of things, we had to go to the County office to get an official birth certificate for Wee, Hubby had to ask his company to expedite the production of his employment verification letter, and so on and so forth. This is a mere tourist visit of less than two weeks, not a permanent resident application.
We've traveled to various countries in the world, but have never had such a hassle as this has proved to be. It's almost as if the countries want to discourage tourists. And how in the world is Brazil going to scale up it's arcane process to meet the demand of tourists for the 2014 World Cup Soccer and the 2016 Olympics?