CA-4: Love Us More!

Written by Bessie about El Salvador. Feelin' annoyed

Immigration offices have always made me nervous. There's something about facing officials from another government that fills me with this fear, like what if he looks at my passport and says, "Ooops, too many Americans in the country - no room for you!" and they send me back to where I came from. Or all of a sudden some there's a 5'3" blonde international criminal on the loose, and poof, I fit the bill, and they take me in. I mean, what could you really do to make some official let you into their country when they're not supposed to? Oh, wait, actually, probably slip them a $20 bill...

Anyway, Kyle and I headed to the immigration offices here in San Salvador because our 90 day visa was set to expire before we head off to our next destination. And if anyone's doing the math, no, we haven't been in El Salvador for 90 days, but we're here on a CA-4 visa. Don't gloss over, this is kind of interesting.

So the CA-4 Visa or Central America 4 visa gives people a 90 day visa into 4 of the Central American countries (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua). It's a version of what I understand about the EU's visa model that once you're in one country, you can go anywhere within those other countries. It's cool for people that live in these countries, but it's sucked for us. Here's why:

Good for the People:
The idea with the CA-4 is that the borders are relaxed for people from the 4 countries, so you don't need a passport to visit your cousins that happen to be on the other side of the border. Costs less for residents, etc.

Bad for Us:
Sort of sucks for us, because we've been wandering around for a while, and because they don't stamp passports as you enter each country we don't get all the fun stamps, and no visa. It's not earth shattering, but the 3 hours in the immigration office and $15/person in fees are lame. It's worth it to be here though.

Last Few Details:
As far as the reputation of the harsh immigration official grilling us for what we were doing here, where we're staying, etc., we were please that it was super easy. An American friend here has had troubles coming and going, but she didn't ask us much more than our travel path within the 4 countries. Oh, and the Salvadorn friend & phone number reference? No one ever called her.

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July 11, 2008 DADDIO: Did you mean to tell us the outcome of the office meeting or are we just supposed to stay in suspense?! Will you continue to be welcome to visitors or are they throwing you out???!!! :>)

July 12, 2008 Orlando: Bessie, I didn't quite understand, what kind of visa do you have? the CA-4? Well I'm a US citizen and when I went to El Salvador since I wasn't able to get the Mexican transmigrante for some mistake I made but the good thing was they didn't ask for it in Sonoyta, and in Guatemala they didn't wanted to stamp my passport because I didn't have the Mexican transmigrante, and when I reach El Salvador border it was the same problem they just let me go without stamp in it for the same reason. This time I'm planing to get the things right and get the mexican transmigrante and what visa do they issue in the four country?

July 14, 2008 Bessie: I'm confused about what the Mexican immigration office has to do with coming into El Salvador. We were in Mexico about 6 weeks though, and before leaving the country, we had to pay a fee for the visa, I think $22. We were supposed to pay it a bank, but we assumed we paid it at the border before we left Mexico, like most countries. Luckily the guy at the border accepted our money & didn't send us a few hours back into the nearest major city with the bank we needed to pay at.

The CA-4 visa like Kyle said is a visa that anyone from outside the 4 countries (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, & Nicaragua) gets if they're traveling as tourists. Hopefully it's not too much trouble for you, we found the central Immigration office in El Salvador to be very organized and not difficult to deal with.

July 12, 2008 Orlando: Too bad I can't edit my messages once I poss them :), cause I forgot to specified what kind of Visa you guys got, I mean is it different for a US citizen or for the locals, you have to get same visa the CA-4?. I know I should be informing myself through uscis.gov and yet I'm here troubleling you guys, cause I know guys have everything figure it out :), but how hard it is for me to find out by myself, it is like a world of mazes that leaves me more confuse than when I started. We got to make you guys salvadoreños, we are going to nationalize you guys so you don't have any problem coming in and out of our humble country, we will issued you guys a DUI, not "driving under the inflluence" but "documento unico de identidad" :).

July 13, 2008 Kyle: We just have the standard 90 day tourist visa that most tourists get when they arrive in the CA-4. As for finding out about the information, we just asked people that live here. That's probably the most up-to-date way to find out all the new info. Surprisingly, there weren't that many government mazes to get through. It is no worse than getting a driver's license in the states.