Chile Immigration Law
Chile Immigration Visa Rejected or Denied
Immigration Law: Chile Visas and Citizenship
visas in Chile rejectedThe truth is, Chile rarely rejects an immigration visas for good cause. The majority are rejected because either a mistake was made by immigration or a mistake was made by the applicant in submitting the visa application for Chile. That rejection however can take months to fix. The first place to start is with the rejection letter you received from Chilean immigration department listing the reasons. Just be aware that the reason given, may not be the only reason that an application is denied. There may be others not included in the letter.

A brief list of some of the most common reasons for immigration application rejection in Chile:

1. Did you apply for the right visa to Chile?  This is one of the more common errors. Foreigner get confused about what visa to apply for when filling out the application. For example, people often times will apply for an “investor visa” in Chile, believing because they have investments such as a house in Chile or business they qualify. The investor visa is never the right visa, even for investors. They are granted temporary residency in the first year easily, and denied in the second year when immigration is not satisfied with the progress of the investment. Often, the reviewers at immigration will simply not understand the investment.  

Another common error, sometimes people will inadvertently select the wrong visa type such as family visa, when there is no family in Chile. The most common, flexible, and successful category used by foreigners is the “retirement and periodic income visa”, when a foreigner has no other ties to Chile such as family or a job. More information about the retirement and periodic income visa can be found here.

2. Did you legalize your key foreign documents?  Every application for immigration requires at least one document legalized according to Chilean law outside the country. The mandatory documents are marriage certificates and children's birth certificates. Also, your source of income outside the country must be legalized. The process of legalization is not the same as an Apostle. There are more steps to the legalization process for documents to legal in Chile. Not every document needs to be legalized. Only certain key documents. Which documents exactly depends on your personal situation, and what resources you have available that would be acceptable to the department of immigration in Chile.  

3. Is it a legitimate request for more information?  Often immigration will initially reject an application for lack of information. Sometimes however they will provisionally approve an application, pending a request of more information. For example, you submit a legalized document proving a source of periodic income, and they wish to see supporting bank account information.

Filing an Appeal with Chilean immigration

Assuming that all documents were submitted correctly and your Chilean immigration application was still rejected, is that final word?  

Most of the time, no.

In recent years, due to extraordinary overload and management issues at the Chilean immigration department in Santiago or the regional office, many applications for immigration are being rejected for no other reason than the annalists at immigration are behind in their work loads. This is simply an issue of bureaucratic inefficiency.

The reviewers in Santiago will often reject applications for no reason, or will invent reasons to push the application off their desk and back to the regional level. For example, sending a request that you submit a letter of intent, when in fact the letter of intent was included in the application already.  We commonly receive request from immigration for documents, that had the reviewer opened the application, the documents or information was clearly included. Unfortunately, errors by immigration are becoming increasingly more common in recent years as Chile has become a more popular destination to live and work.

So, what can you do when you believe immigration has made an error in the handling of your application?

In this case, an administrative appeal must be prepared and filed with immigration. Successful administrative appeals are a complicated process, but when done correctly and with just cause are almost always won. What an administrative appeal does, is elevate the issue to higher management with more authority and experience at the department of immigration for closer scrutiny of your case file regarding an error committed by immigration. They can also be used in unusual or extraordinary circumstances, that fall outside clear cut policies and guidelines that were formulated based on the law in Chile. Immigration does have wide ranging authority to make exceptions, if provided the proper legal reasoning to apply an exception to the rules.  

If your application for immigration to Chile has been rejected and you feel you need assistance with filing an administrative appeal, the attorneys at Spencer Global are available to assist. Our track records speaks for itself. As of the publication of this article, we have been successful in winning 100% of the appeals we have filed on behalf of our clients with Chilean immigration, for visa applications that we have prepared. Of course, we can not guarantee that we will be successful with every appeal, but we do possess the experience increase the likelihood of immigration ruling in your favor.

Please feel free to contact our specialist in Chilean Immigration law for assistance with your immigration application.