Adventures in Brazilian Bureaucracy

DISCLAIMER: The following story is meant to serve as a cautionary tale to anyone planning a long-term stay in Brazil. In no way does the author intend to imply any negative opinion of any Brazilian agency or official. In fact, the author considers the Federal Police, SUDENE, and the Brazilian Embassy to be highly efficient agencies that accomplish their purposes with great proficiency.

The line above aptly titles this account of my attempts over the last two weeks to register as a foreign citizen with the Federal Police. First, a little background: As a student here on a 1-year temporary visa, I am required to register with the Federal police of Brazil within 30 days of my arrival. This certainly sounds easy enough, take a bus to the federal police station, bring a few passport photos, a copy of my visa application, and my passport and I should be all set. In practice, a bit more difficult:

After reading on the internet that to register, one needed to bring a notarized copy of their passport, an original copy of their visa application, 2 passport photos, and their passport to the Federal Police, Ben and I did just that. After spending a morning finding a Brazilian notary, we arrived at the Federal police office only to learn that in Brazil, passport photos were a different size, and ours would certainly not be acceptable. By this time, it was growing late, and so we headed back into town to obtain new passport photos of the correct size. By the time this task was complete, the Federal Police office was closed, and so registration would have to wait until the next day (or perhaps longer…)

The next day, after spending a few moments looking at the map, we immediately realized that the Federal police station appeared to be a simple ten minute bus ride on a road called Avenida Borges de Melo. And so we walked to a bus stop on one of the main roads, Avenida José Bastos, and boarded the bus Borges de Melo 2. Little did we know how important that number 2 was. After 2 hours of circling the city in the opposite direction that we had hoped, we realized that a deeper knowledge of the Fortaleza bus system might be worthwhile after all. (Side note: There are about a 100 or more bus routes in Fortaleza. I am told that no map exists of these routes. I was also told that there was NO source available to figure out the routes, but a little google searching revealed: http://www.ettusa.ce.gov.br/ If you ever find yourself in need of taking a bus in Fortaleza, please save yourself a 2 hour bus ride in the wrong direction and read this site first. )

After our unplanned tour of some of the not-so scenic portions of Fortaleza, we did finally arrive at the Federal police. At this point, things should be simple, or so I thought. Wait in line for a few minutes, turn in my forms, go to the Bank of Brazil to pay my registration fee, and I should be registered for the year. I chuckle now at my ignorance…

After waiting in line for some time, Ben and I reached the head of the line. Now you may recall that I mentioned that one of the requirements for registering was an original copy of one’s visa application. I’ll spare you our luggage story, but suffice it to say that one of my suitcases is still sitting in Brazilian customs in Fortaleza, and one of Ben’s suitcases is sitting in customs in Manaus (Why Manaus? Another long story…) Unfortunately, Ben’s visa application also is sitting in Manaus in the aforementioned suitcase. And so, Ben’s attempt to register was immediately denied by the Federal Police, in spite of the fact that he had a letter from the local US embassy which was supposed to replace the lost document. Still, I remained hopeful that I could complete registration. I presented each of the required documents, was fingerprinted, filled out some forms in Portuguese, and sat waiting for the process to complete. Suddenly, I noticed the Federal Police official looking more closely at my passport. He then stood up, and began showing my passport to other federal police officials. In case you haven’t guessed, that never bodes well. He then returned to let me know that because my passport did not have the words: “Universidade Federal do Ceará” written adjacent to the visa along with the letters RN and a four digit code to indicate the sponsoring organization for my visa., I could not register. Now, I quickly pointed out that in fact this very notation was written on my visa application by the Brazilian Embassy in Washington D.C., but as the Federal police quickly pointed out, the information was not written in my passport.

Obviously, I thought, there has to be a simple solution to this dilemma, but then I quickly realized that I probably had already missed the right time to try crying, and that I also probably lacked the appropriate number of official stamps and titles to easily accomplish anything else within the bureaucracy. Instead, I was told that I would need to send my passport back to Washington D.C. for the appropriate notation to be made. And so now, one week after I began attempting to register, I sit here still emailing the Brazilian Embassy in Washington and various other agencies in Brazil in an attempt to sort this out. Appropriately enough, my latest contact, as directed by the embassy in Washington, has been with an agency in Brazil called SUDENE. I read their website to try to figure out their role in this mess, and although my Portuguese is not great, I think I was able to decipher that their principal role is to handle communication between other agencies in Brazilian government. In a sense, SUDENE, or at least my contact at SUDENE’s sole purpose is to navigate the bureaucracy of the Brazilian government. It has been three days since I contacted them, and I have not yet heard back, so I suspect that they are quite the busy agency…