We have a post on the 12-9 Visa, or the 180 day visa, but we have some additional information on the 12-9 that could be helpful to you and your family.
Due to our family’s circumstances, my mom and sister have to be in Ecuador mid-July. Since we will be on the T3 visa upon entering the country in May, we will have 90 days that we can stay in Ecuador. We will be there from the 12th – 28th, for a total of 17 days, leaving 73 days left on the T3.
When Mom and Karianne fly into Ecuador on or around July 19th, they will need 85 days until the rest of us arrive on October 11th. As you can tell by doing the math, that would cause them to be in Ecuador for 12 days illegally. Not to mention that our lawyer has asked us to be sure to have 70 days on our T3 so that we can get our Retirement Visa started and finished. So that would make Mom and Karianne in Ecuador illegally for 82 days. No es bueno!!
They will be getting their 12-9 before they leave the country in July. The state of Kentucky is assigned to the Ecuador consulate in Atlanta, GA. After numerous emails and phone calls, we finally had to have a friend (who is Latino) get involved, and the funny thing is that the consulate did get back in touch with him. (We are thinking that maybe the language was an issue – we were trying to correspond in English. Our friend corresponded in Spanish and received a reply in a couple of days.) They gave us a couple of links to look at and a phone number in order to make an appointment with them.
We believe we need the following documents in order to obtain the 12-9 here in the USA:
- Passport size color picture on a white background
- Bank statements, bank certificates, or credit card statements showing the applicant has the ability to support himself/herself for that time.
We have already requested a FBI background check for each of them, along with their birth certificate apostilled. We hope that we have covered everything, but we shall see.
It’s interesting that some consulates will ask for a round trip airplane ticket for the 12-9 visa. We were not too happy to hear about this as we all plan to have a one way ticket. It was suggested that we explain that they will be going on Dad’s retirement visa in October and do not need a round trip ticket, that the 12-9 is to keep them legally in Ecuador until October 11th. Hopefully this line of reasoning will work with the consulate.
As we continue this journey, we will let you know the updates and information we find out.
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Carters and Ecuador 