Legalizing Your Baby: Permiso a Viajar

The next step of our process doesn't actually legalize your baby, but it does allow you to travel legally with your child. I have heard this document called a number of different things, for the purpose of this post I will refer to it as the "permiso".

The permiso is a legal authorization signed by both parents and notarized (by an Argentine notary public or escribano) that states that the minor child can leave the country. This document can be obtained for each individual trip, or as a universal permission for all future trips for the child. The permiso is designed to prevent child abduction - by making it more difficult for a single parent to take a minor child out of the country without the consent of the other parent. In theory the only time you would need this document is if you were traveling alone with your minor child, however, as with most things in Argentina, it is smart to be over prepared. Depending on the immigrations agent that you have, you may be asked to produce this document even if both parents are traveling together, be prepared. Also, if you have a minor child, this is something you want to get taken care of as soon as possible just in case some sort of emergency arises and you need to travel solo.

Anyways, as far as obtaining a permiso is concerned, I am a little fuzzy on the details, but I'll tell you what I know. An escribano can prepare and authorize this document for you, and we went to Escribania Maschwitz - Tucuman 715. Here are the documents we needed to complete the permiso:

1. Original passports of both parents
2. Original DNIs of both parents
3. Original DNI of the baby

We verified that all of the information was complete and correct in the document and then both Jon and I signed the page. Three days later we had the completed permiso in hand, complete with notarized legalization. This will now be one of the documents that is always in our travel portfolio when Gretchen is with us. I have looked for more thorough information to share about obtaining this document, and the best information I have found is on the US Embassy website and the Ministerio del Interior site, but these resources aren't really that thorough (my apologies).

Now that we have this, we are just missing one last piece of the puzzle. The Argentine passport. Let us hope it arrives sometime within the next 6 days... Or someone is going to be a not-so-happy camper.