Buenos Aires

I see Mercosur as my passport to living and working in the South American continent. By getting my Argentine residency now, while it is relatively easy, I am making sure that my family has greater freedom to live where and how it wants to.

Many people do not know what Mercosur is.

Growing up in the United States, I did not have a clear idea of the limitations that the borders of different countries place on people. When I was seventeen, my father lost his job, and we moved between States, from Oklahoma to Texas. We had to get new driving licenses and register the cars in the new state, but other than that, the move had the same challenges that any move has; packing, unpacking, registering in new schools, etc. We could have been moving across town. We could drive across the state border without being stopped. We did not have to show any identification. We did not need any kind of visa to enter. My father found a new job and did not have to have a work permit. We did not have to worry about paying any duties when we brought our truck load of things from one state to another.

You no longer need to have visas, work permits, or pay duties on your personal items. You become free to take yourself, your family, your possessions, and your money from one country to another, just as my family did when we moved from Oklahoma to Texas.

We are planning a driving trip to neighboring Uruguay. We are member of the Argentine Automobile Club. They have emergency road service, in addition to maps and other services. For example, we also bought our car insurance from them. I called the main office of the Argentine Automobile Club to ask if our car would be covered by their insurance if we drove it from Argentina into Uruguay. You can imagine their answer.

You can not drive a car between the United States and Mexico without getting additional Mexican insurance.  Because of our Argentine residency, we already have greater freedom to move between Argentina and Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, and Brazil than Americans do with their neighbor, Mexico.

The U.S. government has now been backing the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) that would stretch from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. However, according to statistics in a December 5, 2005, article of the Buenos Aires Herald, Mercosur already covers 252 million people, almost 70 percent of South America’s 362 million, and US$803 billion in annual gross domestic product, almost 90 percent of the continent’s US$906 billions in goods and services produced each year.

I lived and traveled in Spain before it became a member of the European Community.

When the announcement was made that Spain would become a member of the European Community, investment poured into Spain, and it has become a land of opportunity.

Europeans from other countries come not only to vacation, as they had done before, but to buy real estate. Many buy second homes for their vacations and have retired there. They invested wisely.

Right now in Argentina, you only need to show US$800 monthly income as an individual or family to get residency. This creates an incredible opportunity. For example, it is cheaper to live in Argentina than it is to live in Venezuela.