Immigration

We have had an interesting time trying to keep up with Guatemala's residency requirements.  We live 3 hours away from the Guatemala City immigration office, so each time we try to submit paperwork, we have to pay a courier to take the documents, as well as our passports and identification cards, in his private vehicle.  He then waits for the lawyer's assistant to stand in line at the immigration office and handle the transaction for us, and then the courier returns everything to us later that day.  

Earlier this year, before the pandemic hit, we tried to send our yearly paperwork.  The immigration office didn't accept it because we hadn't paid our newly required yearly fee.  So we tried to pay our fee, but the office closed for the pandemic while our lawyer's assistant was in line, and they didn't open again for several months.  Then we tried again, but they had introduced a new document required for the girls and wouldn't accept their fee without it.  So we paid to obtain those documents for the girls and submitted their fees.  Then, after finally paying our yearly fees, we tried to submit our paperwork again, which we had to completely redo because it was now more than 6 months old.  This time we were told we couldn't submit it because we had already paid our yearly fees, the opposite of what they told us earlier in the year.  Go figure.  Five trips to the immigration office and still no resolution to our yearly requirements!

The rules are often changing, and the information we receive from the immigration office seems to depend on which teller is asked or what day we ask!  Let's hope things work better in 2021!