Secured my tickets to head back to Brazil, I’m finally going to finalize my permanent residency there. 

Not sure if you remember the drama from last year but it took us over 10 months to get an appointment with the Polícia Federal for our PR after our son was born (we did birth tourism).

Yes, we did get our appointment before leaving Brazil but it was so far in the future we just could not stay there any longer.

Too many responsibilities elsewhere to stay past the 6 months we were in the country, also I was careful not to cross 183 days in Brazil and trigger any tax consequences.

The really tricky thing is that all of our documents are now expired in Brazil, they were a nightmare to get the first go-around (all embassies were closed during the pandemic) so I was very keen to not have to start from scratch. 

I’ve got some connections in Brazil so even though my documents are now expired; when we submitted them (and they approved them) they were valid, so we were able to get a pass by the Polícia Federal on having to redo everything.

One valuable thing I learned during this experience is not to try and book an appointment at the Polícia Federal in such a popular spot as Florianópolis — go find some little random city no one has ever heard of (and there are no other foreigners around) and do it there, they will have much shorter waiting periods to get your meeting. 

I’m also seeing this same type of thing with clients who are renouncing their US citizenship (which is a super common thing for me to deal with now). Getting appointments in US embassies like Toronto, Paris, London, and Tokyo, have massive 2-3 year waitlists, but we have found really out of the way countries that have a small US population that we can fly people over to do their renunciation appointments there and only have to wait a couple of months (assuming the borders stay open).

Another example, I have some clients going through citizenship by ancestry right now in Italy and Poland (two excellent places to have a second citizenship from), but if you try to go through the process in a country that has a massive European population like the USA or Argentina, then you could be waiting for a decade or more for your passport, but a client of mine did his from Abu Dhabi (where we used to live) and the timeline was a fraction of that time. 

Anyways, back to Brazil, if we had done it this way maybe we would already have our permanent residency (and be further along the path to naturalization and another passport).

Que é a vida…

When going for a second residency or citizenship, it’s not just where you are applying TO but also where you are applying FROM.

Even after 22 years of doing this stuff, I am still testing and trying new ideas…

If you are interested in working with me on formulating a complete “Backup Plan”, including immigration and additional passports for you and your family, shoot me an email, I can work with a very limited number of people to assist.

Speak soon,

Mikkel