I am glad to be Japanese.
Although I do not think about it in daily life, I always realize this in entering other countries.
To Japanese, most countries issue tourist visa for free, but it is not the case with other countries’ citizens.
Residence/working visa is a lot harder to obtain, but still it is easier for Japanese.
Today’s topic is about how to obtain Chilean temporary resident visa for professional or technician(hereafter temporary visa), the one I finally got after a lot of efforts. Although nobody has interest in this topic, I wish it would be useful for someone who might want this information.
【Different visas】
First of all, I will explain briefly what the differences among tourist visa, working visa and temporary visa.
・Tourist visa：3 months／no fee（Japanese）／can not work
・Working visa：2 years ／77 USD（Japanese）／have to work at the contractor
・Temporary visa：1 year（can renovate another year）／77 USD（Japanese）／can work anywhere（no restriction）
【Documents to apply】
・University diploma translated officially in Spanish（Ask stamp and translation at your country’s consulate, and ask official stamp at the Ministry of exterior）
・Application form*（can download from immigration department website）
・3 photo copies（photo page of passport, entry stamp of passport, a paper given in the entry of the country. If you lost the last one, you can ask it at the international police）
・3 photos（Ask photo staff to put your name and passport# on a board, size3x2 cm.)
・A letter of offering job stamped by a notary（it is nominal and you don’t have to work there after you obtain the visa)
*If you want to work immediately, you can request visa in process in the application form, and I did so (you have to pay half of the visa fee as an extra).
【Procedure (spent time)】
①Collection of documents（１ month）
②Sending them to the immigration department（1 day)
③Be noticed that your data was put in a database (3 week) those who had asked for the visa in process at the department and ask can work legally.
④Notice of visa approval (5 weeks）
⑤Pay visa fee at any bank and put visa stamp on your passport (waiting time 4 hours!!)
⑥Ask resident registration at International police（waiting time 2 hours!）
⑦Apply for a civic card at civic registration center（waiting time 4 hours!!）
⑧Be notice that your civic card is ready to withdraw（2 weeks）
⑨Go to the registration center to withdraw the card（waiting time 4 hours!!）
Total: 2 months and a half and 16 hours
The procedure time was as late as I was expecting.
To my surprise, the fee of this temporary visa is 77 dollars for Japanese, but 1,387dollars for UK（list of visa fee by country, 2013）
I am glad to be Japanese.
