There are many, MANY visas you can apply for to live in Ecuador. I chose the Professional Visa, because it seemed the easiest to me.
Generally, it requires a college degree and a state and federal background check. But of course, it’s not really that simple.
First let me say it’s much better and cheaper if you do all of this in the US before moving to Ecuador. Mail / shipping is unpredictable and time-consuming, and you cannot get money orders here like you can in the US. It doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but trust me, it is.
Your degree must have been earned in classroom, not online. And you must get official transcripts and an official copy of your diploma–in your current name–and after you receive those records, they must be apostiled in the US. This takes a bit of legwork–and money– if you’re doing it from Ecuador.
The background checks are the same. It’s better if you do it while you’re in the US than to try to do it here. The FBI check was pretty quick; you can order them online, send them your fingerprints, and they send you digital results that have an expiration date, but then it must be apostilled. I didn’t know this and so had to do it from Ecuador, which was not easy.
There are a lot of options for Visa help in Ecuador, and I hired Visa Angels–a group of people here in Cuenca who specialize in this process–to help me with my visa, because they are affordable and essentially walk you through all the steps, letting you know what you have to do next instead of doing it for you. So, it’s cheaper, and you sort of “pay as you go” instead of paying an attorney a huge amount of money up front in a big chunk. Plus, they are super nice and will answer all your stupid questions without rolling their eyes.
One of the Visa Angels helpers has a father who lives in Brooklyn, so I paid $500 for him to do these processes for me. When he gets all the results, he will ship them here to Ecuador so I will have them for my Visa meeting. Waiting for these documents is stressful!
And, Clark County, Nevada, is backlogged with requests, and they are taking forever to get my state background check back. I will have to pay a lot of money to “expedite” the apostille process so I can receive it in time for my meeting with Immigration.
You don’t want anything unexpected or out of order during your Visa meeting at Immigration. Mine is in February, and I’m grateful they are booking that far out, as it gives me time to get all my ducks in a row. If everything isn’t in order, I may be moving to Mexico until I can try again. And I can’t tell you how much I hate moving! Luckily, my job allows me to work anywhere in the world, so there’s that. Maybe I can try Belize? Or Costa Rica? We’ll see what happens.
But in any case, I’ve invested about $900 so far for my visa. If it’s approved, I will be allowed to live here for 2 years, which counts toward my residency. At that point, I will need to apply for permanent residency.
Feel free to hit me up with questions about this visa!
ECUADORIOUS 