The Risks of Allowing Your Bolivia Tourist Visa to Expire

Tourist Visa past 90 days: Hi Bella! You said you wanted to hear from people about extending a Tourist Visa, so here goes! If anyone else knows how to do it, please post.

We came on a tourist visa and our child was born in Bolivia. Their Government gave us an ID in 24 hours and Passport in another 24 (with a little coaxing).

But, the US Government/Embassy would not allow our child to obtain a visa to bring it home; said we HAD TO make it a US Citizen. This took two months and threats of a DNA test to prove it was truly our child.

We went to Immigration before the Tourist Visa expired and explained and they said they would not extend it- no way, no how- for any amount of money. They told us, just pay the fine when we left, which is what we expected to do (about twice the cost of the original visa, per day, $3).

But, when we checked into the same hotel we had checked into upon arrival, we were raided by Immigration, who got our names from the Hotel, and they could see that we were there more than 90 days before. They were polite and when we explained the situation, they understood. We had to spend a day at Immigration to get our Passports back and then another day at the end when we wanted to pay the fine and leave the country.

All in all, they were much friendlier than in the U.S. I expect we would have been in an Immigration prison for months, gone to court and then deported, if this happened in the U.S.!

One more thing. I am not advising anyone to do anything illegal. Just to state a fact: once we realized that we were over our time, if we had given a false Passport number and name to the Hotel, this wouldn't have happened, as they wouldn't have been able to track us. But, we tried to do things above board.

We tried to do things correctly and were advised by them to stay in the country overtime, so the problem arose from their own miscommunication between the Investigator that came out to get us and the Immigration Officer who had advised me to stay and not do anything about the expiring visa.

Thank you for your site. I have gotten much good information about moving, shipping, visas and buying land from your site and the http://liveinbolivia.com site. There are not too many good English Bolivia sites around.