And finally the day arrived! After so much waiting and paperwork, we had traveled from Denver to Los Angeles a day earlier for our appointment on February 1st, 2022.
We had reviewed all the documentation about five times, without being exaggerated. Making sure that we had absolutely everything, the translations, the copies, the apostilles and in the order indicated in the requirements. Although this is not necessary, we felt that organization-wise it helped us greatly. And when we got to the appointment, we realized that they asked for them in that same order.
Our appointment was at 9:00AM and 9:30AM, the first ones of the day, we arrived about 15 minutes early and they didn’t let us up until almost 9:00AM. Upon entering, they called us both at the same time, unlike other cases where we have read that they call you by appointment times. The person who helped us was very kind and asked us for the documents one by one, just like the order in the requirements. The only thing we had to correct was the date of one of the applications, as we had not put the appointment date (Feb 1) but a few days before. NOTE: We suggest dating everything with the date of the appointment.
At the end of turning in all the documents, we knew that we had not missed anything (yei!) and in fact there were plenty of documents and copies but as they say “the more the merrier!”. At the end of the interview, they kept our passports and gave us the originals of the following documents and told us that they would ask for them in Spain (they have never asked for them):
- Criminal records, the apostille and translation
- Marriage certificate, the apostille and translation
- Medical certificate
At the same time they gave us a “Visa Enrollment Receipt”, which is a receipt that the application was received and registered, and the receipts for the payment of the residence fee. In addition, a paper showing the Extranjería/Immigration Office in Spain, where we would had to make an appointment to obtain the TIE (Foreigner Identity Card) once we arrived in Spain and that we had 30 days to do so.
She told us that the approval would take 6 to 12 weeks, which made us a little nervous, since we had plans to travel in about 7 weeks but at that point we had no choice but to wait.
However, GOOD NEWS! The approval arrived by email on February 8, 2022, one week after the appointment and we had up to 1 month to pick it up. So we waited a couple of weeks, as we were in the process of moving, and went back to packing our things and catching a flight to Los Angeles to pick up our long-awaited Non-Lucrative Visa!
Como Cuando… the 1st step to emigrate has a happy ending!
#emigrate #visanolucrativa #livingabroad #livinginSpain #nonlucrativevisa #documentos
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