New to hopefully becoming an Expat in the DR

Do you already hold residency status?

You must start residency application from home country.  Can't do it while in DR on tourist Visa.

That cost me some delays, too.

Jim
ExpatRusher

Thanks Jim, I just getting started in this whole process!  I am looking to work and have a few offers on the table. From what I’ve read, the offer of employment makes the residency portion somewhat easier.

Thanks for your insight, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have lots of questions for everyone!

Kindest,
T

Excellent.  If you need help with the immigration process, Lishali Baez is the best immigration attorney in the DR, IMHO. 

Now, a few questions for you, for my own education in this area:  if you obtain residence under a work visa...is the length of the visa term strictly limited to the time the job lasts? 
Or, do you get some stay time after a particular employment ends, to find alternative employment??

Many thanks,

Jim
ExpatRushet

I am in pre employment negotiations and getting my ducks in a row. I’ll be sure to let you know how each step of the way goes.

Right now, my understanding is that the DR has no formal “work visa” program. You can work for a company as long as it’s a legitimate above board company.

T

I am in row to get all these processes to be a done before visiting DR

Welcome Tanya.  Your understanding about no formal work visa program is incorrect honey.

The govt is cracking down on illegal work.  A formal work visa sponsorship  will be required!  It's a process and you will need to start that process from there.   

Start by reading the various forums on here.  I also strongly recommend a good lawyer.  Lishali is highly recommended by a number of us here. 

I understand the work visa sponsorship from the employers point of view!  When necessary it's a useful program.  The days are gone where you can just show up and work here for a local company.

Please keep us posted on your progress!

You are absolutely right,we have to follow all requisite due diligences

I am going by the information from the DR consulate:

Citizenship law in the Dominican Republic reflects its people: warm and open. Nearly everyone is welcome, whether for business or pleasure, and many can obtain residency or citizenship.

As a foreign national, you are either a "nonresident" or "resident." Nonresidents are those who intend to stay in the country for a limited time for a particular purpose such as business or pleasure. A resident is a foreign national who is staying in the country for an extended period and has obtained legal residency status, which affords the foreign national legal status in the country entitling the person to an identification card (Cédula de Identidad Personal) and access to a more favorable tax structure. Foreign nationals must properly register with the Registry of Foreigners (Registro de Extranjeros).

Anyone eighteen or older may apply for citizenship. The three most common avenues are birth, marriage or residence. Article 20 of the Dominican Constitution permits dual nationalities (and a Dominican may acquire a foreign nationality without the risk of losing Dominican nationality).

Under Article 25 of the Dominican Constitution, Foreign nationals own the same rights (and responsibilities) as Dominican nationals. There is one exception - a foreign national may not participate in political activities except voting in elections. If you face legal problems while being in the country, you can request diplomatic protection. This is only possible if you have tried every other possible solution.

First step: temporary (provisional) residence

The application for temporary residence is submitted to the Dominican Migration Department. Once granted, it will be valid for one year. It will entitle you to live and work legally in the Dominican Republic and you won't be required to purchase a tourist card to enter the country. After one year, you will renew your temporary permit for one more year, which will be easier to arrange than the first application.

After five years as a temporary resident you will be able to change your status to permanent. Normally, you will obtain your visa in three months but it can take up to six months in order to get a temporary resident, so do make sure that you arrange this in time! So what do you need?

First of all you will need to send a letter of application addressed to the consul or the Minister of Foreign Relations. Which should contain your name, nationality, place of residence, and the activity that you will perform in the country. If it is filled in by a company, the manager in charge should sign the form. Besides that, you should explain your connection with the country. You could be a Dominican by origin, married to a Dominican, have a work contract or finally, you could have proof of economic solvency. Besides that, you will need:

the Visa Application Form
form 509 - this English translation of the form comes in handy.
a valid passport with at least two photocopies.
birth certificate with photocopy.
medical Certificate, this document must be notarized, translated into Spanish and both the original and the translation apostilled.
Police certificate (also known as a certificate of good conduct), including an official criminal record certificate. This document must be notarized, translated into Spanish and both the original and the translation apostilled. If the applicant has previously resided in the Dominican Republic that document must be issued by the Attorney General's Office.
Certificate of the Department of Migration with proof of the last entry of the person to the country and copy of the Tourist Card.
work contract / certificate
if the application includes the spouse, a marriage certificate should be included. This document must be notarized, translated into Spanish and both the original and the translation apostilled.
in the case of minors, permission of the parents or guardian. If the child is not to be accompanied into the country by both parents, it is required that the parent who is not in the Dominican Republic authorizes the other parent to move with the child permanently to the Dominican Republic. This document must be notarized, translated into Spanish and both the original and the translation apostilled.
if the application includes children, the birth certificate of the children should be included. This document must be translated into Spanish and both the original and the translation apostilled.
three pictures, size 2 x 2 inches, with a white background
application letter from the beneficiary addressed to the Consular Section containing name, nationality, place of residence and occupation, as well as information on reasons for seeking to establish in the country (Of Dominican origin, child of a Dominican, Dominican spouse, as pensioner, or investor).
All documents need to be presented in original and four copies with the exception of the passport and the cost will be US$125.00

That is not  a complete  list of how this works.  You need to qualify for a work visa and it is a pretty strenuous process.  Because of Covid it also  became tougher to qualify.

Take our advice and get a lawyer.  In fact, the company trying to hire you should be  getting a lawyer involved!  I   do work visa sponsorships on a very very limited basis and I  know  its not easy. I have a lawyer for this.

Thank you for your input.

I have a meeting set up with embassy for them to clarify all pertinent information. I’m the type of person that goes straight to the source and cite my references when speaking of factual evidence. What I posted earlier was direct from the DR website.

I will seek out a professional if and when I require one.

Keep us posted.

Fyi. Often websites here are not updated in a timely manner and may not have all the info.

medictanya:

I wish you the best of luck in your process.  But I advise great caution.

It is not uncommon on these forums, for new folks to come on, all excited about having bought a condo, and it is due to be finished in xx months or weeks...oh, and they need to get a residency done right away.  Who do they call for the final interview?  (I'm exaggerating a bit here, for effect, but others can vouch that this is not an infrequent occurrence.)

Inevitably, the developer had promised the buyers that the residency process would be simple, easy and fast...and cheap too!! 

The buyers are always quite surprised to find that the reality is far, far different from what the developer had promised (or at least implied). 

The DR immigration process is unfortunately pretty arcane, convoluted and arbitrary.  We recently accomplished in Panama in 6 months and one visit (and most of that was waiting for COVID to clear sufficiently for us to visit safely,) what it took us 32 months to accomplish in the DR.   
>>  Frankly, there were two primary sources of the delays in the DR:  1) Selecting the wrong lawyer in the first place, and 2) COVID.
>>  A downstream impact of choosing the wrong lawyer (besides wasted money and lost time) was that we seemed to have rubbed certain officials in the Ministry the wrong way in the process of changing lawyers.  I'll spare the gruesome details, but I'm speaking from recent experience, not theory. 

You are, unfortunately, mistaken that any Consulate or Embassy website is the final authority on immigration matters.  The final authority is embedded firmly in Dominican Law, and the application of that law is managed by the Ministry. 
>>  If you troll around the site a bit, you'll find examples of where different Consulates actually have quite different practices for fulfilling the Ministry's instructions and DR immigration laws.   Why?  Heck if I know!!  But it is a real phenomen.
>>  In the end, it doesn't matter what the Consulate or Embassy says or has you do -- what matters is how the Ministry evaluates the final application package, and applies the law to your particular case.

We're not trying to blunt your enthusiasm, medictanya.  We're rooting for your success.  We'd love you to join the community of expats here (My wife and I are "here' in the DR temporarily, to pick up our residencia and cedula -- we will be snowbirding, not here full-time). 

We're simply warning that you need to go deeper than a Consulate's or Embassy's website.  Based on what others' have experienced, the process is far more complicated than is being portrayed to you. 

A bit of caution and additional research now is quite likely to save you one heck of a lot of time, trouble and money, later on. 

Kindly intended,

Jim
ExpatRusher

BTW, lest you think we are just trying to guide you to a particular lawyers because we get some kickbacks...we do not. 

There was a large group of us having trouble with our applications because of difficulties with the lawyer we had all hired.   My wife and I were one of that group, and ended up terminating that lawyer out of sheer frustration. 

We fled immediately to expat.com, looking for recommendations for a replacement lawyer.  Honestly, a couple lawyers we interviewed didn't want the work -- too complicated given who our previous lawyer was.
Anyway, someone recommended Lishali Baez as a bright, young and hardworking  immigration lawyer.  We called her up, persuaded her to assist us, and she took our case.  Didn't have to start completely over...but probably about 60% over.   Nevertheless, not counting the COVID delays and travel bans, we got our applications approved within about six months actual work time -- which is awfully good.  Took longer than that "real time" because of the COVID lockdowns, travel bans, etc.  Lishali did more in just six months of work than our previous lawyer had done in 14+ months. 

Lishali does EXCELLENT work and overcomes major obstacles that seem to stymy other lawyers as "too difficult."   Yes, we paid her fees -- and feel she earned every well-deserved cent!!!  That's how she makes her living, and we don't begrudge it. 
>>  On the other hand, Lishali also saved us several thousand dollars in various additional expenses that "the system" tried to extract from us in the later stages.  For that reason alone, we (my wife and I) recommend Lishali without reservation. 

So, please, carefully consider our suggestions and recommendations.  We're simply trying to help you avoid some traps that too many of us previously fell victim to in the complicated DR immigration process.

Really good post, thank you.

Expatrusher, I am sorry you, and many others, have gone through this experience with "that lawyer".  And so happy there is a person who is able to resolve the mess you found yourselves in.  Your situation exemplifies the DR in so many aspects.   Many of us love the DR for it's lack of "nanny-state" laws, but then, when we need some protection from an outright thief with a license to practice law, the government doesn't offer any, or if there are laws on the books, that's just where they stay: on the books.  They are never applied in the real world.  The extra freedom in the DR is a real double-edged sword, and cuts both ways arbitrarily.  The protectionist laws most of our home countries have are there for a reason, but don't exist here, for better, and sometimes, worse.  We all fall victim to it sometime, but by and large, I think it is better.  We just need to train ourselves to think differently, to try and see what is actually happening and act on those suspicions quickly, because there isn't a safety net here.  Glad this episode has a positive outcome for you,  and I hope you tell anyone and everyone about your experience.  Lishali deserves the praise, and the other one can crawl back under her rock.

Oh my,  soooo  well said!

This advice is spot on IMHO. As a resident now I only offer limited advice (few listen anyway), and we do get asked a LOT about our experiences. Firstly, pay the money for good representation. The "damn the lawyers" attitude needs to be shelved if you hope to get things done. And secondly, rent and explore here before you buy (i.e. take your time).
[mic drop]

I bet I know that shyster lawyer.....

I dropped her before we even started
I only chose her b/c she was local .....

LOL, she does get around!  I randomly bumped into an expat in the grocery store and after talking a few minutes he mentioned he was shafted by his residency attorney and looking for another. Guess who.

Please listen to the others on this forum.  My husband and I moved here as retirees.  We were trying to do it all ourselves and when we went to the consulate in Ottawa they basically told us we didn't have enough funds to retire and that it was expensive blah blah blah.  I turned to this forum and the best advice they gave me was to contact a lawyer name Lishali.  We didn't want to spend the money and I won't sugar coat it, it was expensive, but without her we would probably still be in Canada trying to sort everthing out instead of living here now.  It is a very convoluted process and she made it so easy.  Our cedula should be arriving any day now.

https://migracion.gob.do/en/servicio/pe … y-workers/

Here is the information on work visas - straight from the Migracion website.

And that does not contain all the info either. 

There are various rules as well to know ahead of time both for the sponsoring company and the applicant.

Hilda

Lishali is a fraction of the price that others charge.....
Very fair pricing.... AND.... she delivers

Others charge more & deliver less.......

Then I was very lucky!🙂

I agree Willie. Her pricing is really good. And she delivers.

planner wrote:

And that does not contain all the info either. 

There are various rules as well to know ahead of time both for the sponsoring company and the applicant.

I'm sure! But since the OP didn't want to believe it unless she heard it straight from the source, I thought I'd share the site to show that there is a formal work visa process.

Absolutely!!!  Thanks!

I just hope we haven't scared medictanya away.  Didn't mean to intimidate her.  Hope we didn't intimidate her.

I am pretty sure we did not. 

The OP strikes me as someone checking and double checking information! 

I am pretty sure she will be back.

I’ve read through all this and nodded and laughed.  Spot on advice.  I guess DR can be a good place to live, people/we just have to be prepared for the sht show!

Thanks to everyone who comes here and gives advice and helps others avoid making mistakes!

Ahhhh can someone tell me when the bitterness about the lack of clarity or process in this country... when does the bitterness end?

Can someone IM me Lishali's information?  Please

Lishali  Baez 1-809-860-1231

Bockri -  well everyone is a bit different. I am used to things after   almost  18 years here. BUT there are some days I handle it better than others. You never stop  observing and wishing it could be better. You never stop getting frustrated on some level but you adapt.