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Post by scumbuster on Mar 8, 2019 8:18:13 GMT -5
Well, Colombia has officially lost 9 months of my income for the foreseeable future due to tax policy. For those expats with a Colombian spouse there is a quick easy way to get temporary residency in Ecuador. The pension or investment visas require a lot of paperwork from your home country. You must get an apostille for each document and translations. I looked into them and it would have been a royal pain in the ass, probably taking several months to compile all the info needed for the application if doing it from Colombia.
The MERCOSUR Visa is available to Colombians with almost no paperwork and can be done online and at an Ecuadorian Embassy. A Colombian can apply, and then apply for there spouse to get a visa based off there visa.
What do you need? A Colombian
1. An online application. 2. A clean 5 year police report w/apostille (1 week to receive) 3. A copy of your passport & cedula. 4. Electronic passport photo. Download documents onto the form online and submit electronically. $170,000 COP application fee.
3 days later approved and appointment scheduled to pick up an electronic visa at the Ecuadorian Embassy. After Colombian has visa can apply for non Colombian spouse.
Non Colombian Spouse 1. An online application 2. A written letter from spouse applying for your visa based on her already received visa. Should include info such as there name, passport # and Ecuadorian visa number. 3. A clean police report w/apostille (1 week to receive) 4. A marriage license w/apostille (can pick up marriage license same day but 3 days to get apostille) 5. Copy of your and spouse passports and cedulas. 6. Electronic passport photo.
Download documents onto the form online and submit electronically.
$170,000 COP application fee.
Non Colombians must also pay a $680,000 COP issuance fee.
3 days later approved and appointment scheduled to pick up an electronic visa at the Ecuadorian Embassy.
This is considered a temporary 2 year visa after which you can apply for permanent residency. With this visa there are no restrictions on work or going to school in Ecuador. The only potential drawback I see is this visa requires you to be in Ecuador for 9 months a year.
While we like living outside Bogota, after returning from the last 2 months investigating Ecuador, we are freezing our asses off. LOL Now our plans are to spend several months around Christmas here and the rest in Ecuador, at least while we have our temp visas.
A helpful tip if doing this. All documents must be PDF files. You have limited files you can load to your application so scan several items into 1 PDF file. Your visa is officially valid the day you enter the country with it and you have 6 months to take personal belongings into Ecuador tax free.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2019 8:25:20 GMT -5
Interesting, what part of Ecuador did you like and consider a place you would like to live-some place on the beach?
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Post by scumbuster on Mar 8, 2019 8:57:40 GMT -5
Interesting, what part of Ecuador did you like and consider a place you would like to live-some place on the beach? The reason we decided to get a visa was we found a nice oceanfront lot and plan to build a small home. The lot is just 30 minutes south of Manta, so it will be very similar to how we are now about 30 minutes north of Bogota. Access to a big city without all the traffic. The area we chose has migrating whales going up the coast in front of our lot. When we were there, there were dozens of sea turtle nests on the beach and the ocean was some of the clearest/bluest I have seen. The temps were very comfortable with a steady 24/7 breeze off the ocean. Away from the ocean it was hotter but still not like Texas or FL in the summer. LOL We have been there both in summer and winder. In the winter (June to Sept) you can use a light jacket early morning or late at night. Summer (Dec thru Feb.) it's hot away from the ocean but still only in the 80s most of the time. For seafood lovers, Manta is a great place. There is a large seafood market and you can get your seafood fresh right off the fishing boats. Starkist and several other tuna companies have there processing plants in Manta so that's where all the big fishing boats bring in there catch. Ecuador has just announced that they are rebuilding the Manta airport and making it an international airport. Flights now from Bogota (one way) are running about $260 each. We are heading back in 2 weeks and I may post some drone videos. Until we get our place built we will pay $600 a month rent all included. It's also oceanfront just down the beach from the lot we got. I specifically did not want to live in a big city. After looking at air temps and ocean temps we decided we needed to be between Salinas and Manta. North of Manta the air temps get too hot and south of Salinas the ocean temps get too cold. We also wanted within 1 hour of a bigger city which greatly limited the areas we were looking.
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Post by barrumundi on Mar 8, 2019 10:00:01 GMT -5
Congratulations!
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Post by caliconnection on Mar 8, 2019 14:06:05 GMT -5
This is very good info. Thanks for posting. Maybe there is a good use for my wife after all? Just kidding...
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Post by buenopues on Mar 8, 2019 18:06:48 GMT -5
I considered moving from Colombia to Loja , Ecuador many years ago but my compaña objected.
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Post by elexpatriado on Mar 16, 2019 9:22:43 GMT -5
Mostly guys on the "Lam" from the US move from Colombia to Ecuador..I have never heard of anyone leaving due to "tax problems" or other problems from the government in Colombia
One is "Smokin Dave"..a good ol boy redneck chain smoker from Kentucky who the DEA was after for importing contraband cibarettes into the States.
But he was dumb enough to come back to Medellin because there were no young desperate women that were interested in him in Ecuador...The DEA caught him and shipped his a$$off to prison in Florida
Another was this scam artist , who despite being a multi-millionare, took delight in ripping off his fellow expats (and maybe Colombians as well) and had to leave to Ecuador for his own safety. A certain member on this site purporptadly fantasized (not seriously I am sure) of meeting him in the back alley with a baseball bat
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Post by saltador on Mar 19, 2019 21:48:59 GMT -5
Scumbuster, Sounds like paradise to me. Good luck to you in this endeavor. I'm free to travel and visit you so make sure you have a spare bedroom!
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Post by james on Apr 24, 2019 15:02:28 GMT -5
SCUMBUSTER -
I knew you were moving to Ecuador, but I don't know much about the country other than where our property was in the Atacames/Tonsupa area. When I told my wife that you were building a place near Manta, her comment was, " That's where the earthquake was in 2016." I remember the quake, and many homes and businesses in our area were damaged. I looked up Manta on Google maps. It is only about 250 kms from Atacames. This is a portion of the WIKIPEDIA description of the quake
"The 2016 Ecuador earthquake occurred on April 16 at 18:58:37 ECT with a moment magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). The very large thrust earthquake was centered approximately 27 km (17 mi) from the towns of Muisne and Pedernales in a sparsely populated part of the country, and 170 km (110 mi) from the capital Quito,[1] where it was felt strongly.[4] Regions of Manta, Pedernales and Portoviejo accounted for over 75 percent of total casualties.[5] Manta's central commercial shopping district, Tarqui, was completely destroyed."
I'm not wanting to be a spoiler. I just wanted to mention that since you're building a place, you should make certain that the design is as earthquake-proof as possible. Our place in Atacames was built from solid poured concrete and suffered no damage. None of the tall condos in the paradise beach area were damaged either. Only the older homes and businesses built years ago were lost.
- JAMES
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Post by scumbuster on Apr 24, 2019 18:18:45 GMT -5
James Yes it's a really big thing here as they just "celebrated" not sure that's the right term for it, the 3 year anniversary of the big one here. I have seen a lot of photos of Manta and Portoviejo and spent quite a bit of time in both. They both were devastated. There are still many buildings that havent been replaced in both cities.
Portoviejo is the capital of this area "Manabi province". It includes Manta and it has adopted California earthquake building standards since the quake. So all new construction in this area will be in pretty good shape. They also require the design engineers to inspect and sign off on the construction. Truthfully where I am, I am more worried about a tsunami. The good thing is there are cliffs right off the beach here and in less than 10 minutes I could be about 800' vertically off the beach. The village I am in only lost 1 home to the quake even though many look to be built with poor quality of construction. Right now Manta has a lot of 20+ story luxury apartment complexes going up. I would still be leary of living in a big one like that during a big quake.
The architect/engineer we have been talking to showed us a lot of empty lots where he said 20 story buildings fell to the ground. One fell across a road and landed on a car with a family of 5 inside. Some really sad stories from the quake.
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Post by james on Apr 24, 2019 21:41:11 GMT -5
Scumbuster -
I glad that the building code in your area has been upgraded. Better safe than sorry. Earthquakes are scary. We lived in Southern Cal from 1981 until late 1994. There were earthquakes every once in a while, but nothing bigtime until the Northridge quake in January '94. We had an earthquake "alarm" in our bedroom. It was a pendant on a chain hung on our dresser's mirror. Whenever a quake was starting, the pendant would tap against the glass before the real shaking started and wake us up. On the morning of the Northridge quake (about 4:30 AM) it woke us. Usually quakes only lasted a few seconds, but this was different. The house started to shake violently, and it seemed to go on forever. I told Luz to go to the garage (which was reinforced) and I went to get the kids. I had to crawl because the shaking was so bad that I couldn't stand. About the time we got to the garage, it stopped. There were a few aftershocks, but not too bad. Surprisingly, our house suffered little damage. Most of our neighbor's homes were partially collapsed. I believe our reinforced garage was what held our place together. We loved SoCal, but decided then and there that it was time to leave. We sold our place and moved to Georgia 10 months later.
I wasn't crazy about Ecuador. Still I loved the fact that our store was only a few blocks from the ocean. Whenever we were there, I spent every day body boarding or surfing when the tide was coming in. But after the quake, we were done there. If I can offer you some advice, it would be to build the strongest house you can. Again ... better safe than sorry.
- JAMES
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2019 8:14:36 GMT -5
Scumbuster - I glad that the building code in your area has been upgraded. Better safe than sorry. Earthquakes are scary. We lived in Southern Cal from 1981 until late 1994. There were earthquakes every once in a while, but nothing bigtime until the Northridge quake in January '94. We had an earthquake "alarm" in our bedroom. It was a pendant on a chain hung on our dresser's mirror. Whenever a quake was starting, the pendant would tap against the glass before the real shaking started and wake us up. On the morning of the Northridge quake (about 4:30 AM) it woke us. Usually quakes only lasted a few seconds, but this was different. The house started to shake violently, and it seemed to go on forever. I told Luz to go to the garage (which was reinforced) and I went to get the kids. I had to crawl because the shaking was so bad that I couldn't stand. About the time we got to the garage, it stopped. There were a few aftershocks, but not too bad. Surprisingly, our house suffered little damage. Most of our neighbor's homes were partially collapsed. I believe our reinforced garage was what held our place together. We loved SoCal, but decided then and there that it was time to leave. We sold our place and moved to Georgia 10 months later. I wasn't crazy about Ecuador. Still I loved the fact that our store was only a few blocks from the ocean. Whenever we were there, I spent every day body boarding or surfing when the tide was coming in. But after the quake, we were done there. If I can offer you some advice, it would be to build the strongest house you can. Again ... better safe than sorry. - JAMES James I just noticed-CHIEF EXPAT PROBLEM SOLVER, that's ok but please do not become a GURU. haha
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Post by scumbuster on Apr 25, 2019 11:30:36 GMT -5
The one thing I stressed to the architect/engineer was the structure holding up in a violent quake. I told him if San Lorenzo was flattened to the ground I want our home to be the only one left standing.
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Post by billforce on Oct 21, 2019 21:32:20 GMT -5
I'm not so sure STRONG is the best survivor in earthquake prone areas. I grew up in Tehachapi, Calif. and in 1952 an earthquake devastated the town and the entire surrounding area. Of course the town sat near the Garlock Fault but Calif. is networked with faults. I myself experienced the '99 earthquake in Pereira, Colombia. I was in Japan in 1952 sitting in Tokyo Harbor and noticed that in the Yokosuka Area in Japan all new building were made of a bamboo sub-frame and they swayed like a leaf in the wind but stayed up, no one was killed that I heard of. For years I worked for industrial manufactures in Calif., we built engines, pumps compressors etc. to CALIFORNIA seismic standards, they were all built on heavy "spring" bases that could withstand any earthquake without damage, that's not to say that the buildings that surrounded them didn't fall down. Some areas are earthquake prone, for instance Medellin has never experienced a massive earthquake for other parts of Colombia have, I'm sure it's the terrain but If I build I would hesitate to build in an "earthquake prone" area.
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