Expat Community > Colombia

V8mondo
Joined 2023
Posts: 6

Jumping Through Hoops for Type M Visa !

1 year ago

I have managed to get all the required documents for my 'Type M' visa as I am married to a Colombian national...

The document gathering was reasonably painless, but time consuming and required several visits to Registry Offices and Notaries...

Once all documents were gathered, they had to be saved as PDF files, most of them I took a photo of and once on the Mac were they were saved as PDF files - less than 1mb in size is required.

I uploaded the docuements to the Cancilleria website within my application and tried to make payment. The payment system does not work for any option, bank card, bank deposit or PSE payment system...

So, I emailed the Cancilleria Office and amazingly they emailed me back within 2 hours!!! The email had a link to make the payment with a visa/mastercard. Although, the link is not obvious in the email, and they do not really advise you it is there... The sum was around 257.000 COP and their link included the sum to pay.

However, the visa cost is 270 USD. So, I queried the payment by email again. Next day I received a reply, stating that the 270 USD payment will be required if the visa is accepted. The 257.000 COP was just for the visa study!

Amazing! Usually you make a full non-refundable payment to the parasites of Europe whether you obtain a visa or not.

So, a week later I received a new email from the Cancilleria asking me to upload the documents again as the originals were blurry.
They were right, the Migratory Movement document issued by the Migracion Colombia was blurry, so I went through the process to create a PDF again and deleted the original uploads then uploaded the non-blurry documents once more.

'30 minutes' later I receive another email stating that I needed to upload the Migration document and Marriage Certificate again WITHOUT DELETING ANY OTHER DOCUMENT - their emphasis - so, I did.

Now I am waiting for a response. I check the website daily inputting the application number and passport details, it still shows as 'In Study'...

At least it has not been rejected. Although, I understand that if you are married to a national - for almost 12 years now - and show migration between your respective countries they cannot reject the visa. I had a visa and cedula prior to expiry too.

So, I understand from other posts, that the office at the Cancilleria is manned by those that may be out of their depth and really winging it on a daily basis. It shows too.

I am still within my 90 days, and they are close to their 30 day requirement to make a decision. So fingers crossed !

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