Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Our Carnets Have Arrived!

 Finally, finally, finally, our carnets, aka Chilean ID cards, have arrived. Our Chilean lives can now officially begin! This will be another post about our woes with the Chilean government, not a fun travel post; just a forewarning. Abort now if you so desire. 

The carnet journey begin as such. Back in March when we finally received our temporary residency visas, we traveled to Mendoza to close our tourist visas and reenter the country on our new residency visas. Once we cross the border, according to the immigration website, we have thirty days to visit a Civil Registry Office to apply for our carnets, or ID cards. I immediately went online to book our appointment, and the first one available at our district's office wasn't for 5 weeks later. Great. We went to the office anyways just to see if they did any walkup appointments, but no, that wasn't the case. Would the fact that our appointment was 5 weeks after our entry stamp when it needs to be within 30 days be a problem? No, as long as the appointment creation date is within the 30 days, you're fine. Ok. 

5 weeks go by and we arrive at the Civil Registry office bright eyed and bushy tailed, every possible document we had in hand. The appointment went super smooth and everything seemed to be in order. We could see the mock version of the ID cards on the computer screen with all our info and picture already entered in, and we could see our new RUT numbers as well, meaning they were already generated. The RUT is similar to a social security number. It's an unique identifier for life, and in Chile, you can't do much without it. Luckily I had the forethought to write our new RUTs down, because this next part gets a bit silly. 

At the end of the appointment, they give us a receipt with a date a month from then saying that is when our ID cards will be ready for pickup. I was a bit bummed they couldn't be printed on the spot. But ok. A month from then, we show up, again every hope in the world that our immigration process is complete. The guy at the pickup counter looks at our receipt blankly and tells us the "ready by date" on there is simply the earliest it could be ready. And, sorry, but they aren't ready yet. We will receive an email when they are. Optimism shattered. Any idea how much longer it will be? No.

A month after that, with still no email, Drew goes back to the office to try to rattle some cages. He speaks with some manager who adds us to a "Please process quickly" list. But still no promises. Why is it taking so long? The factory that makes them with the special chip is having production issues. Ok.... Two weeks after that, after our Buenos Aires trip, we get an email on Monday, July 28th that the boys' ID cards are ready. But not ours. Why the kids' ID cards would get finished before ours is a head scratcher. But Drew received his email that his was ready on that Wednesday afternoon. He immediately goes to the office, but the pickup office is already closed; it's only opened from 8am-2pm, of course.  Thursday morning, we show up, Drew collects his card and the boys'. Is mine ready? No. Regardless we go out to breakfast to celebrate, because since most things are in Drew's name, his ID card is the most useful. But that same afternoon, I get my email: Ready for Pickup. Friday, we go back, for the 3rd time that week, and finally pickup the last ID card. And we go out to breakfast to celebrate again because you have to celebrate these little wins in an adventure like this. 

Things we can do now that we have our RUTs. 1. We can shop at Mercado Libre, which is the Chilean version of Amazon. Why oh why would you need your Chilean ID card to shop at an online platform? Passports are not accepted. In the states, if a customer wants to give a vendor their money, the vendor takes it no questions asked. We wanted to give Mercado Libre our money, but as a foreigner, they would not accept it. The only thing I can think of is that their backend systems are designed with only Chileans in mind, and it would be too difficult to update them accordingly? But surely it must be worth the effort to do so, given what the immigration scene is like now with folks streaming in from Venezuela and Haiti. Or is it a legal thing dealing with taxes? Who knows. But we've spent about $1,000 in a week buying all sorts of random crap that we couldn't before. Consumerism has been restored.  

2. We can register our van in the toll road system and get an official toll pass. Before we could not do this, so we were either avoiding toll roads and using only surface streets, or, for our trip down to Chillan for example, we simply bit the bullet and paid about $100 to use the toll roads without a toll pass. 

3. The boys can officially register in the Chilean school system. Prior to this, the boys were attending their school in good faith that we would receive their ID cards at some point. But until we receive their RUTs, they essentially don't exist to the Chilean government, so there would be no record of them attending the school. Now their school transcripts will be official.

4. We can sign up for our Targeta Mi Vita, which is like a Vitacura Neighborhood Card proving we live in the neighborhood, which gets us discounts at the Rec Center, local pool, events at the local parks, etc. 

Lessons learned: Chile is a very hard country to immigrate into. Several expats have asked us this question: why did you choose to live in Chile with how difficult the immigration process is, if it wasn't a work related move? Honestly, we didn't know it would be this difficult. Everything on the government websites seems in order initially. But everything takes 10 times longer than it should, and there are lots of processing mistakes. And every government employee you talk to has a different answer to the same question. All of this stems from the fact that there wasn't alot of immigration to Chile 20 years ago, but now there is a ton, and their systems are not up to the task to handle this kind of volume. I probably could have done more research in chat groups, reddit threads, etc. to see how difficult the process actually is. Will definitely do this for any future moves we attempt. That being said, I'm not sure it would have changed our decision to move here. After visiting Buenos Aires, it's clear that Santiago is definitely the right place for us. The life in our middle class bubble here is very stable and safe. We love being close to both the mountains and the ocean. Our school has been the perfect fit for the boys, and we love our walkable neighborhood. So would we have picked a different country knowing how difficult this process was? Probably not. But maybe we would have girded our loins a bit more or maybe have thrown a bit more money at the issue with an immigration lawyer or something. But, at the end of the day, we did it! Hooray! Or as they say in Spanish, iuju! (The sound of those letters in Spanish sounds like yuhoo!) Time to celebrate.  

No comments:

Post a Comment