www.gringoes.com
Another website focusing on foreigners living in Brazil, www.gingoes.com. It has a forum, too, that looks like it will be very useful. It’s very frustrating for me to find official and correct information about various legal issues, both because of my poor Portugeuse skills and because government documention of things just doesn’t seem very good. For instance, for registering as a foreigner with the Federal Police, I went to their website to find a number to call to talk with someone about how to do it. The phone number from the website referred me back to the website. Nowhere but in the building, on a sign on the wall, did it provide the hours to go register, which cost me one wasted trip as they closed at 2pm in the afternoon.
Anyway, I’m working on getting a bank account now and I still need one more thing to do that — proof of residency — which I should be able to do now. How is more mysterious. An electrical bill is likely enough, but I don’t want to wait, but apparently the Federal Police can provide me a document. I’m told the hours for this are more restrictive — 9am to noon. And it isn’t clear which documents I need to take with me, so I will be taking all of them and hope I don’t need to print something off the web somewhere (I will look).
Crap, I’m looking into this and I wonder if all the bank wants is my RNE — Registro Nacional de Estrangeiros — which I did last month. I have a temporary card and a number for this, which I guess does establish me as a foreign resident…hmm, no. Looks like the banks have a separate requirement for the RNE AND “proof of residency.” My friend who called for me emailed about “Extrato do SINCRE” which she had never heard of. Well, one more round here. And some more online research, which may save me a few cab rides and some confusion.
Tags: documents, government, gringoes.com, websites
February 10th, 2009 at 3:19 am
If you don’t have any utilities in your name (which is the easiest), you’ll probably need an authenticated letter from whoever does have the bill in their name saying you live with them. At least I think that’s how it works. I can’t remember exactly.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Another friend suggested that the RNE might be sufficient, at least for some banks and some types of accounts. Between this information and your comment, I decided we need to call and talk with someone at the bank again.
We got a hold of someone who told us exactly what would make them happy given my situation, and we now have an official letter from the University with various addresses and numbers, my name, and some additional language, and this particular manage at HSBC should be happy with it. I will try to open an account tomorrow.