Life here is not all tango: a story about moving to Argentina

Our reader Irina shared an interesting story about how you can now move to Argentina for permanent residence. About everyday difficulties, possible difficulties, as well as the pros and cons of living in Messi's country – in her detailed review.

Argentina is the most popular country for pregnancy tourism

Wind on your mustache! If a child is born in this country, he automatically receives citizenship, and mom and dad are guaranteed to receive a residence permit! But we are not planning to have children yet :)

Our move and paperwork was long and complicated, but we did it! My husband and I learned Spanish as a student, and upon arrival we had to not only refresh our knowledge, but also relearn and get used to the castesciano dialect. I thought the difference would be insignificant, but in fact it is quite significant, especially when you do not know the language very well. 1/1

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Opening an account for a foreigner is difficult, but possible

The main problem is the conversion of any currency in the account into pesos. But we do not have much savings and all the salary received goes to daily expenses. Inflation here is crazy, but everyone is used to it and live with it: salaries are indexed, people are happy, and if you have income in dollars, then there are no problems at all. It is impossible to orientate at prices in pesos, they change almost every month.

Even in Argentina, everything is done very slowly

All state authorities will answer you indefinitely! Bureaucracy, paperwork and eternal queues… And with all this, people are happy here! This is the main advantage of the country. It is safe here (crime is several times lower than in our country), with any dissatisfaction from the people, the trade unions immediately organize protests and rallies (and get their way), almost all the media are independent, free medicine and education. By the way, the level of education here is one of the highest among Latin American countries, and it is very difficult to legalize or confirm diplomas from Russian universities here.

Features

It is very expensive to travel anywhere from Argentina, it is also unprofitable to order goods from abroad, but the country has a huge potential for home tourism. As for goods from abroad, you can do without. There are no such well-known brands as Ikea and H & M (oh, now they don’t exist in Russia either :), but their domestic market is very well developed. The automotive industry, the textile industry are well developed, and several factories for the production of household appliances of well-known brands also operate. You definitely won't feel left out.1/1

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Now about our move

We gathered for about six months, scoured the forums, joined different groups expats in the country. You can stay here for 90 days without a visa, you can change the visa status to a migration visa and extend it on the spot. The cost of changing the status is 240 USD.

In Argentina, there are a lot (more precisely, 20) ways for a foreigner to legalize. You can choose on the state website, literally everything about life in Argentina is written there in detail, however, everything is only in Spanish. But if you know the language, then everything is detailed and first-hand, you don’t even have to read the stories of some strangers on the Internet.1/1

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We have been living in the country for 6 months on a digital nomad visa

To obtain such a visa, you need a minimum of documents: the main thing is to confirm your stable income. The downside is that with this visa it is impossible to obtain a permanent residence permit, we will think about how to obtain a work or investment visa or decide to acquire an heir.

It is better to translate all documents in advance, notarize, make an apostille – this is the most difficult part of the process. But consider the slowness of the system: the validity of all pieces of paper in Argentina is quite long. The main thing is to get all the documents that you may need in advance, back in Russia: a translation of your passport, a certificate of no criminal record. You will not be able to obtain these documents on the spot.

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Renting a house is easy

As elsewhere, it is more profitable to conclude a long-term lease agreement. You will have to pay two prices, one of the deposits is non-refundable. Due to high inflation, the amount of the monthly increase in the cost of housing may be included in the contract, carefully read the contract!

We are just getting used to a new place, but we already like this country.

Yes, life here is not a continuous tango, but there are much more pluses than minuses. And like I said before, people are everything!1/1

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People are open, kind, they give you much more than you can expect from strangers, and, most importantly, they do it sincerely. You will discover the pluses even without my advice, everyone has their own: cuisine, mentality, climate, sights, political situation… But I will highlight the minuses again in short points, it is important to know them and be ready for them:

1. Difficulties with opening an account and withdrawing currency: all money is automatically converted into pesos at the official rate. Credit cards are in use, but it is impossible to issue them to a foreigner without a residence permit. For transfers, Russians very often use cryptocurrency, but this is for modern ones, if you, like us, do not understand how it works, there are consultants who will help you for a fee.
2. At reasonable prices for products and services and the goods here have a very high value of real estate, since it is pegged to the dollar.
3. The time is not valued here, either one's own or someone else's, any business will move slowly and nothing can be done about it. Just understand and accept.
4. Queue lines, bureaucracy, a response from a government agency can take months.
5. No one will ever tell you a direct “no”, it’s easier for people to say “yes”, and then not to come or not to do, it's terribly annoying! But over time, you will learn to distinguish between these two “yes” :)