FM3's
A couple of weeks ago we decided that it was time for us to investigate getting our FM3's. The FM3 is a visa that allows us to stay in the country for a year without having to head for the border for a new tourist visa. We emailed a friend and asked if it was within his scope to help us with this. He replied with the name of an accountant here in town, as he recommended her to us, we assumed that she could speak some english, not so we were to find out. One of the ladies in the office could speak a little bit of english and between that and our spanish we managed to do what we needed to do.
Thursday and Friday, October 4 & 5, 2007
I printed off some bank statements from the computer, took our passports, and a power bill with us, intending only at the first visit to ask exactly what else we needed to supply. When we got there, the lady looked at what we had, said it was good and sent us to get some photos taken at a nearby place. When we returned she helped us fill in the forms, took our thumb prints and took us over to a copy shop where we got copies of our passports done. Good she said, they should be ready in a week, phone us next Friday to see if they are ready. We walked out of the office, lighter in the wallet, feeling kind of stunned. That was it???? After all the stories of misery that I had read online, why was it so easy? What we were missing here?
Later that afternoon we got an email saying that they wanted a statement from the bank with the banks stamp on it. Hmm....what to do, our bank is in Canada. The bank was closed for the day by this time, so I had time to think about it. The next morning I tried by phone and email to get ahold of someone at the bank. When I finally got to speak to a human I explained what I needed and asked if they could print off a statement, stamp it and then email it to me. Naturally, they said they couldn't do that; but they said they could fax it to my Canadian accountant. I asked them to do this, then I phoned the accountant and asked them if they could then scan and email this statement to me. Yes, they said they could. By 9:30 AM Friday morning I had what I needed. There are some people who still do their jobs efficiently apparently. I then took this downtown to the lady and was told the FM3's should be ready by the next Friday.
The next Friday, October 12, 2007, I phoned the office and was told that they were not ready; but would be ready by the next Thursday. Yesterday, when I was downtown I went and checked and they were not ready; but was told that they would be ready by 10 AM Friday morning (October 19, 2007).
This morning we waited until 11 AM before leaving for the office, when we arrived at the office we were told to go straight to immigration to sign them and have another thumb print taken.
We headed down to immigration and at first they couldn't find them, told us they were not ready and some other stuff that I didn't understand. I then mentioned that the lady at the accountants office had told us that they were ready. Oh, OK, then they looked in a different spot for them and there they were. We signed the FM3's and another paper and we were done. Out of the office with our brand new FM3 booklets in our sweaty little palms. Exactly 2 weeks start to finish! Wow!!
We walked down the street to a restaurant to celebrate with lunch and a beer. When we walked into the restaurant, we noticed that our landlords son, Ciro was sitting in there eating. We sat down and enjoyed having our lunch with him. When we told him we were celebrating and showed him our FM3's, he insisted on buying our lunch for us. What a nice thing for him to do.
A fairly painless procedure compared to what I had expected, and now we are good for a year.
