Visa application forms and information re Brazil

When you go into the various visas they seem to throw up serbia, america, nigeria etc. Is there one for the UK, Portugal or Europe?
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08/02/22 When you go into the various visas they seem to throw up serbia, america, nigeria etc. Is there one for the UK, Portugal or Europe?
- @ltoby955


The QGRV (Quadra Geral de Regime de Vistos) summarizes the duration of non-resident visas -- Diplomatic, Official, and Tourist -- for citizens of all countries:


Applicants for resident visas of any kind can ordinarily apply for them at Brazilian Consulates in their current country of residence, but they need to meet the visa requirements for citizens of their country of citizenship.  The easiest way to find out what those requirements are is to go to the Visas section of the website of the Brazilian Consulate where they would apply if they still lived in their home country, obtain the required documents listed there for the desired visa, and submit them with their application to the Consulate in their country of residence.
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Hi there I opened thhe link attached and it just mentions re the 90 days. I really want to look at the visa requirements for retirement visa or family reunion. I want to see which documents are required Abthree, I had a first name change about 7 years ago and went onto the online visa form and the question asks have you been know by any other name,it just gives you an option of judicial or Matromony.
I cannot by law have my birth cert changed. I saw a mention of the possibilty of just showing passport and ID cards, is this the norm or will they require birth cert?
Sorry a bit of a curved ball there?
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08/03/22  Hi, Itoby955.  When I say "resident" visas above, that includes everything except Diplomatic, Official, and Tourist Visas, so it includes retirement and family reunion.  Requirements vary by citizenship, which is why I suggest checking the website of the Brazilian Consulate responsible for your hometown -- when Brazil has more than one consulate in a country, they usually divide that country into consular districts.

I'm not sure what your citizenship is so I can't direct you to the right page, but here's the page from the Consulate General in Chicago's site as an example.  Each link takes you to the document requirements for that visa that apply to US Citizens:

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@abthree Thanks so much for all your help. I came across a lawyer today that explained the uniao sautavel, it seems that there is no time limit on being together and if notorized and lodged with the dept for documents it can help with a visa, is that as good as it sounds? My partner as I think I have mentioned before is Brazilain. we have been friends for years and togther this year.

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08/03/22 @abthree Thanks so much for all your help. I came across a lawyer today that explained the uniao sautavel, it seems that there is no time limit on being together and if notorized and lodged with the dept for documents it can help with a visa, is that as good as it sounds? My partner as I think I have mentioned before is Brazilain. we have been friends for years and togther this year.

- @ltoby955

Absolutely correct.  Sorry for the jargon:  when I have talked about "registering at the cartório", that means "notarized and lodged with the dept for documents".  A cartório is the notary office.  Consulates and the Federal Police will accept that document as sufficient proof of a união estável, and you can probably do it the next time you're in Brazil on a tourist visa, if you want to.
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@abthree That's great news, many thanks.

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@ltoby955 you need to apply from outside brazil. You need to get the vipre visa for permanent  residency from your local closest consular office. If you're  married to a Brazilian  you can get this or the retirement one. They give you a one yr visa and you need to take a form and fill out a form at the Federal police office. I just did it all. You also need to apply for a CPF card. At least this is how it's  done in cda.

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@ltoby955 you need to apply from outside brazil. You need to get the vipre visa for permanent  residency from your local closest consular office. If you're  married to a Brazilian  you can get this or the retirement one. They give you a one yr visa and you need to take a form and fill out a form at the Federal police office. I just did it all. You also need to apply for a CPF card. At least this is how it's  done in cda.

- @Cserebogar

I am sorry, but I am afraid to say your information is both incorrect and out of date. For one thing, the VIPER visa program ended in 2017, five years ago. For another, the new  VITEM system gives you RNM or National Migration Registration, and the card is called a "CRNM".  The CRNM is the National Migration Registration Card and is the most important Brazilian document for foreigners. The CRNM was established by Law No. 13,445 / 2017 (known as the New Migration Law). Another point is the length of validity, for example, my CRNM never expires, and I  never have to renew or re-apply. The visa application process can be done in Brazil, or through a Brazilian Consulate in another country. Once the process has been completed, then an appointment with the PF is required for a simple final interview.


The VITEM visa categories are, (from [link under review]

VITEM I – Temporary Visa I (research, teaching or academic extension)
VITEM II – Temporary Visa II (health care visa)
VITEM III –Temporary Visa III (humanitarian visa)
VITEM IV – Temporary Visa IV: (student visa)
VITEM V – Temporary Visa V (paid work visa)
VITEM VI – Temporary Visa VI (working-holiday visa)
VITEM VII – Temporary Visa VII (religious confession)
VITEM VIII –Temporary Visa VIII (voluntary work visa)
VITEM IX –Temporary Visa IX (investor visa)
VITEM X – Temporary Visa X (visa for activities of economic, scientific, technological, etc.)
VITEM XI – Temporary Visa XI (family reunification visa)
VITEM XII – Temporary Visa XII (artistic or sports activities visa)
VITEM XIII – Temporary Visa XIII (temporary visas due to international agreements)
VITEM XIV – Temporary Visa XIV - (temporary visas due to the Brazilian immigration policy)
VITEM XV – VICAM (temporary visa for foreign doctors or medical training)
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@Cserebogar according to the many  lawyers and visa agents posts on google they don't say that. I read that in a uniao stavle you go to a notary or notaria in Portuguese swear that you are in a said relationship and register that with the department and then go to the federal police for the visa.

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@rraypo sorry vitem not viper...viper was the old. They don't  give out permanent visas anymore.

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They don't  give out permanent visas anymore.

- @Cserebogar

As of when?  Mine is one year old and  Permanent, no expiration
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Regarding expiration dates: If your next renewal date (10 years away) for your permanent residency card (not visa), is after age 60, the card you are issued now will be permanent. If that doesn't apply you must renew the card every 10 years. Your permanência (permanent residency visa) is, as it indicates, permanent-- unless you leave Brasil for more than two years without returning in that time,
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08/05/22  Rraypo provides the complete list of visas above, which serves as a good basis for researching the requirements on the site of a visitor's local Brazilian Consulate.

Visitors should be very careful, however, about assuming that they can start a permanency process after arriving in Brazil on a Tourist Visa.  The Federal Police expect people who are seeking residency in Brazil to arrive with the correct visa from a Brazilian Consulate in hand, and are resistant, even hostile, to any attempt to bootstrap a Tourist Visa into permanent status.  I am only aware of two common exceptions to this:
  • The Federal Police will grant Authorization for Residency on the Basis of Family Reunion (functional equivalent of a VITEM XI) if the foreign applicant provides sufficient proof of the relationship (e.g., a Marriage Certificate recognized in Brazil) and all of the required documentation.  This is done as an accommodation to the Brazilian partner, not to the foreign applicant, so the Brazilian partner should be present at every stage, and the applicant shouldn't expect any flexibility on the documentation requirements;
  • During the first months after it was created, the Federal Police were granting Authorization for Residency to Digital Nomads (functional equivalent of a VITEM XIV -- Digital Nomad) to people already in Brazil.  Now that the visa is established and the Consulates have their procedures in place, I don't know that the Federal Police will continue to be flexible on this.
To be successful on any other basis, the applicant will probably need either to be sponsored by a Brazilian employer (very rare when already in-country) or a Brazilian school (possible, but expensive), or be represented by an attorney, a despachante, or some other type of well-connected "fixer".  That can be expensive, and success is not guaranteed. 

Bottom line, there are no shortcuts around starting with the right visa.
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Great information everyone.
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Rraypo
Great information. Do you know the steps, especially the first step, I need to take to obtain the VITEM XIV retirement visa if I want to apply while in Brazil? I'm currently in Brazil on my first 3 months on an American passport. I was thinking to go get an extension for another 3 months and then start working on the retirement visa.  Do I go to PF or another office to start the retirement visa? Is there a way to apply online? Also, I didn't know I would get a RNM when I was approved, which is good. Would I be able to get a CPF number. Also, I guess I don't understand the difference between immigration to Brazil and the retirement visa. What happens after I get the retirement visa? Is that the first step to permanent residency?
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Rraypo
Great information. Do you know the steps, especially the first step, I need to take to obtain the VITEM XIV retirement visa if I want to apply while in Brazil? I'm currently in Brazil on my first 3 months on an American passport. I was thinking to go get an extension for another 3 months and then start working on the retirement visa.  Do I go to PF or another office to start the retirement visa? Is there a way to apply online? Also, I didn't know I would get a RNM when I was approved, which is good. Would I be able to get a CPF number. Also, I guess I don't understand the difference between immigration to Brazil and the retirement visa. What happens after I get the retirement visa? Is that the first step to permanent residency?
- @jasonlovesdogs

I would not wait. Since you are in Brazil you must go to the PF with all documents under the Retirement Visa requirements. In Nov. 2019 the retirement visa changed. If you're already in Brazil, the process varies slightly. You'll have to ask for residency and provide the same documents to the Ministry of  Justice. The application is also a little different.
CPF can be obtained via RF or even the post office. You do not need to be a resident to get a CPF but you must have proof of address.
A retirement visa is a part of immigration and falls under the Mister of Justice! All PRs are obtained via the MJ. (PF)
If you read the information above, the PF makes it difficult to bootstrap a tourist visa into any other visa.
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Texanbrazil,
Thanks. What is RF?
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Receite Federal like the IRS
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Do you know the steps, especially the first step, I need to take to obtain the VITEM XIV retirement visa if I want to apply while in Brazil?
- @jasonlovesdogs

Good luck with that.

As I've said here and in several other threads, I doubt very much that the Federal Police are going to be willing to accommodate you.  HOWEVER, if they are, that will be big news and will be of great interest to other people in the same situation, so if successful, I hope that you'll post how you went about it here. 👍🏻
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We have tried to advise you in a "soft" manner.
As mentioned it will be difficult not having spent time in Brazil and knowing the MJ and RF systems.
You may encounter a stone wall with the PF. It was intended to go through the Brazilian Consulate covering the area in the US where you live.
The documents you are going to be required to have will be verified by your bank(s) in the USA (up to date) and translated.
The following is from Houston Consulate in late 2017:
"To obtain a retirement visa, you must be over age 60 and have a pension that earns at least $2,000 per month. To apply for a retirement visa, you must apply at least four to eight weeks before arriving in Brazil. You must apply through a consulate general office or the Brazilian embassy and provide several personal documents, including a copy of your birth certificate."
I would go to the PF office and ask them. Now if not able to speak Portuguese it is going to be tough. Applying is the first part. Banking and setting up wire transfers are other obstacles.
Brazil Consulates in the US speak English. Not many in the PF small offices (or desire not to) speak English.
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@abthree

Dear abthree, I have no idea about the specific permit you guys are discussing here, but your comments took my attention. How were they making it difficult in the past, I'm curious? If it will not be off-topic of course.

Could things have been changing with the new immigration law from 2017 and the MigranteWeb system? Let alone being able to apply as a visitor in Brazil right now, I even see an option as an "overstayer" (in need of regularisation/Em necessidade de regularização no Pais) to apply for any kind of permit now in their systems. Which I think was absolutely not possible in the previous law/system.

I also shared an official application guidance in another thread, about the Digital Nomad permit, which has information on applying from within Brazil and outside Brazil separately, and applying from within Brazil doesn't seem to be discouraged at all to me, nor a temporary measure. But I might be misreading the signs, of course.
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08/05/22  @worldsoundly

I'm not sure that I understand your question, but I'll see whether this answers it.

The 2017 law did completely change the whole immigration system for foreigners hoping to live in Brazil.  The two biggest changes were that it eliminated the Permanent Visa, VIPER, that had been a mainstay of Brazilian immigration for over 40 years (VIPERs already issued were grandfathered, however) and replaced it with a series of Temporary Visas -- VITEM; and it clearly assigned the final decision on who can reside in Brazil to the Ministry of Justice.  Under the old system it had been shared with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  MigranteWeb only mechanized the 2017 system, and its changes are are significant in terms of process, but minor in terms of requirements.

To illustrate the difference, I was one of the last people to move to Brazil on a VIPER for family reunion.  Once the Consulate issued me the VIPER, I had a right to live in Brazil, and the work of the Polícia Federal was purely ministerial:  unless they were aware of some material misstatement of fact on my part, they HAD to issue me a CIE, the predecessor of the CRNM.  And they did.  (Now I'm a Brazilian citizen, so the immigration rules don't apply to me anymore.)

A month after that, the VIPER for family reunion was officially replaced by the VITEM XI.  A VITEM XI holder only has the right to come to Brazil and apply to the Polícia Federal for Authorization for Residence, and to stay in Brazil until the request is acted on, free of the time limits of the Tourist Visa.  The VITEM XI process no longer is the final approval, but it acts as a pre-clearance:  the PF does rely on it, and it speeds the process considerably, but the PF can reject the application under the current law.  That's the function served by the whole VITEM series:  to pre-clear potential immigrants.

The 2017 law left Tourist Visas basically unchanged; the visa waiver program expanded for certain countries by the Bolsonaro administration only simplified the process for citizens of those countries, it didn't change the time limits for staying.  Like most countries, Brazil has a "wall" between tourist visas and residence visas.  That was true of the old law, and it's true of the current one. 

One thing that the new law did not do was to make it any easier to immigrate and settle in Brazil.  Except in the case of family reunion and (for now, at least) digital nomads, a foreigner with a Tourist Visa is no more likely to be able to overstay and bootstrap that into an Authorization for Residency that a foreigner who overstays a Tourist Visa in the United States or Europe.  I'm aware of one person who was able to do it, by spending several thousand reais on an attorney, and probably several thousand more ... in other ways.  That's all.
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@abthree Thanks a lot for your detailed response.

I was curious about the difficulties of changing status from a "Tourist" visa/entry to a residence permit.

If I don't recall it wrong, in the past it was not legally possible to apply for a work/study permit as a tourist at all - You had to exit the country and apply from home. It is possible to apply for them since 2017 as a tourist, and even as an overstayer, on paper. (I had taken this as a sign that they would like people to regularise their status.) For example, in every DOU I see a few new work and other permits provided within Brazil but of course we don't know the circumstances.

As I understand, maybe the 2017 law made it possible, but as per the information you provided, in practice it still is not any easier then.
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And a link for this topic in general:

If you speak Portuguese, you can always use the "Navegação Guiada" on the Justice Ministry's website, which guides you through, 

- Depending on your location (Brazil/Abroad)
- If you already have a residence permit,
- If not, if you're a visitor, temporary visa, or in irregular condition,
- And which permit you would like to apply to.


When you choose the options for a visitor who wants to apply while in Brazil as a retired person, it delivers the page for Resolução Normativa Nº 40, where you would have to check the section (Art. 4º) that applies to the people already in Brazil.

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08/05/22 As I understand, maybe the 2017 law made it possible, but as per the information you provided, in practice it still is not any easier then.
- @worldsoundly

The fact is that a lot is still up in the air. 

For example, the old VIPER for retirement, unlike the VIPER for family reunion, wasn't changed -- it was just eliminated in the new law.  When a new Retirement Visa was created later it was less generous than the old one, and has an insurance requirement that I think is probably unconstitutional, since it seems to bar permanent residents from SUS.  But who's going to challenge it?

Another thing.  One of the beauties of VIPER was that it never expired.  A VITEM XI does.  It's going to be very interesting to see what happens when people who have a valid CRNM because of family reunion return from abroad after their VITEM XI expires, and are legitimate residents but no longer have valid visas.

Only time will tell, so stay tuned.
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and has an insurance requirement that I think is probably unconstitutional, since it seems to bar permanent residents from SUS.
@abthree

Now that you mentioned it, I think for this specific reason exactly, the private insurance requirement is only for the applications through consulates for the digital nomad permit. It is not a requirement when you apply in Brazil. And after having a quick look at the Resoluçao Normativa 40, seems similar for the retirement visa. I guess they know that you are correct about the unconstitutionality and so that no one can challenge it legally in Brazil, they made it this way. The consulates usually have more rights to ask for extra documents.

I think everyone, including the people on retirement permit still have full access to SUS freely if they choose to do so. But the ones applied abroad, they now have a private insurance, so they will probably prefer a private hospital covered by it rather than being an extra load to SUS.
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