Now TWO police reports are needed for a EC resident visa - state & FBI

gardener1 wrote:

New Requirement for Residency Applicants: Criminal Background Check...so, can anyone here provide experience with the FBI report? Approximately how long it takes to be completed and apostilled?

The FBI uses channeling companies that are contracted for the purpose of issuing criminal background checks, and there are channelers all over the country.  A simple Google search should show you the one(s) closest to you, Top Cat.

My report was produced by such a channeler in June of 2013, the month I moved to Ecuador, in metro Cincinnati, Ohio.

The channeler may or may not provide the required fingerprints.  With the prints and your ID, you fill out simple paperwork for the channeler.  Within a few days of applying for it (I had already arrived in Quito), I received the completed background check online.

The problem I encountered was in getting the report apostilled by the U.S. State Department.

They refused, for reasons still unclear, to grant the apostille the first time I mailed in the application from Quito to Washington, D.C.

I then emailed the channeler in Ohio for guidance, and was told simply to mail in the apostille application again.  I did so and the second time, the State Department provided the apostille.

However, with two weeks being the approximate mailing time per envelope and four mailings being needed, it took almost two months to obtain the apostille.  In Quito, the Cancilleria ruled that they would not  accept my visa application -- it was one day too late!

My attorney then pulled a sweet maneuver, and obtained a rare 45-day visa extension for me, enabling me to submit the visa ap without having to leave Ecuador.

My EC permanent-residency visa was approved in February of 2014, about six months after I first met my attorney in person. 

Had I brought all necessary paperwork and apostilles with me to Ecuador, the visa process might only have taken a couple of months.

Since I only had to submit one criminal background report, the FBI one, I never looked into the process of obtaining a state report.  I had lived in multiple states in the five years before moving to Ecuador, which under the new rules might have involved a lot of applying and apostilling I missed out on.

cccmedia in Quito

Thanks. Will look into the channeler business, never heard of it before.

But it does seem to me that with all these short deadlines, you could very well find yourself getting all the paperwork and having to buy a plane ticket the next day to get the hell to Ecuador and submit the visa application without a minute to lose.

This is very difficult. It takes time to arrange your personal affairs to move abroad, completely outside of gathering up the growing list of self-detonating documents.

Although the interpretation of all rules is subject to change, the background report is normally valid throughout the visa process, provided (in this example) that the 180 days has not run out before the residency-visa application is submitted.

So, let's say you obtain the FBI report 45 days before the move to Ecuador, and you promptly send it second-day air to the State Department, you would likely have over four months' time in Ecuador before your application is due.

That's plenty of time if -- unlike yours truly -- you have your other required paperwork ready before the move.  That eliminates having to do time-consuming overseas mailings.

The X-factor is the new requirement for state background reports and how long your state(s) might take for processing.

The more time-detonating visa requirements that Ecuador concocts, the more important it will be for Expats to retain an attorney.

cccmedia in Quito