New Regime to Apply for a Visa Urgently

On September 3, 2012, the Official Gazette published Disposition No. 2145/2012 (hereinafter the “Disposition”), issued by the Argentine Immigration Department, and which established a new system to obtain an urgent appointment to apply for a temporary or a permanent visa.

Due to urgent business needs, whenever a MERCOSUR national (or from associated countries) executive may end up entering Argentina as a tourist, the new Disposition will allow the applicant to obtain an urgent appointment to initiate the visa application within 36 business hours. The application’s cost is AR$ 1,500.

The Disposition now allows to resolve a serious inconvenient, which is the urgent application of a visa for executives who are MERCOSUR nationals (or associated countries), since the only possible alternative –under urgent circumstances–- was to apply for the visa at the Argentinean Consulates, with an estimated processing time of 30 days. Therefore, the executive will have a fast track to submit his/her application and to obtain an authorization of preliminary residence, being therefore enabled to be included within the local payroll.