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Retirees are one of the types of foreigners who most decide to settle in Colombia. For many years, we have helped hundreds of retired men and women from different countries worldwide, especially from the United States, settle in Colombia by obtaining a Visa M-Type: Retirement.
Most of the time, the retirees we receive have completed the years of service in their different activities and the age required by the government to obtain their social security or private pension.
Each month, we welcome a significant number of members from the Veterans Affairs Administration who are interested in retiring in Colombia, a country recognized as one of the best for retirement by International Living’s Global Annual Retirement Index 2022. Information that you can find detailed in our blog: Retirement Visa in Colombia: How to get it, costs, and more.
Let us remember that the general requirements for obtaining a retirement visa are:
So, for the members of the Veterans Affairs Administration, in the course of the year 2022, it has become a requirement to provide additional documents, such as:
However, during the last week, we have received an alert due to Visas Denial Cases for U.S. War Veterans by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia (CancillerÃa) and different consular sections of Colombia in the United States.
What is happening about Visas Denial Cases for U.S. War Veterans?
The CancillerÃa is quite demanding with retirees.
What is happening is that the Ministry makes a deep and detailed analysis of each case. First, they seek to review the background of the foreigner and their state of physical and mental health. So, depending on this, the government decides if granting a visa to a foreign war veteran represents a national inconvenience. Finally, they give visas to U.S. war veterans.
What does “National Inconvenience” mean?
The national inconvenience in these cases is associated with two main events:
Possibly endangering the security and tranquility of the people who live in Colombia.
Contributes a negative burden to the Colombian health system. This is associated with the denial of visas in 2020 since, from that moment on, the Colombian government realized that a high percentage of foreigners residing in Colombia do not contribute to the country’s social security system.
What are the aggravating circumstances that cause the denials?
What does a visa denial mean?
The denial of a visa is the final rejection of the application by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
It is essential to keep in mind that once a visa application has been denied, we will only be able to present a new application after six months, counted from the moment of the denial.
In addition, there is no appeal against the decision to deny a visa by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to Chapter 2, Article 79 of Resolution 6045 of 2017.
What do we recommend to our clients in these cases?
At the moment, we recommend suspending the visa processes of those war veterans who meet the aggravating factors listed above. This is to avoid an imminent denial. It would be better to wait for the situation with the Colombian government to be more precise about granting visas to retirees.
At expatgroup.co, we will remain attentive to the development of this topic, and we will keep our expat community informed through our blog articles and Newsletter.
