Legal! Finally!

It took almost nine months for our Jubliado Visas (geek visas) to be approved. First of all, there was much confusion about our having US passports and Portuguese documents. Our lawyer wasn't following up closely, so our applications sat for several months before he finally woke up. It only took a day to resolve the confusion but then our applications were caught in the flood of other applications, as well as a change in directorship at Immigration.

Finally, on May 6th, we saw on the Immigration website, that our applications had been approved. We notified our lawyer (and no, we are not recommending him to others). We were told that the earliest we could pick up the visas was on 16 May.

My mother arrived late on 14 May, and I drove her up to El Valle on 15 May. Early on 16 May, I drove back to Panama City, collected Tommy and we walked over to the lawyer's office. His minion drove us to the Immigration office, where another minion had "taken a number" for us at 7 am in the morning. Our number was finally called at 11ish, and the minion moved the paperwork from one window to another. Don't ask: haven't a clue why. The Immigration office is in an old building, with seating for about 100 and standing for about 500. Even then, in order to move, you had to shove people out of the way. It was chaotic, hot and seemed completely disorganized. No wonder the government has approved a new building and offices for this department.

We were finally told to get in the line for photographs; we waited in that line for about an hour, all the time watching others being taken out of line and ushered into the photo place. Obviously, they were bribing the officials and I would have been glad to, as well, had I known this was a possibility. So, I did the next best thing: explained that mi esposo had cancer and that he had an appointment at the hospital for treatment. We were photographed and had our approved, stamped and official visas within the half hour.

Wish I had thought of that earlier!