If you had an appointment with the immigration office to renew your TIE or residence card, as well as any other type of scheduled activity, those are now cancelled. So, what do I do if my visa has expired or is about to expire during the state of alarm?
What should I do if my residence card is about to expire?
This may seem somewhat dramatic at first. Your TIE or residence card may be about to expire, and you cannot renew it (since any face-to-face immigration procedure is paralyzed). Technically you will become illegal.
But the news is not as bad as it seems. You won’t have any problems renewing your residence card.
Well, a Royal Decree has been approved to deal with the interruption of deadlines for the processing of public sector procedures (including any public administration, without exception).
What does this mean? You can still submit your renewal application, and you can do it online.
For the renewal to be valid, you must start it before the expiration of your card (60 days before) or 90 days after. You can carry out the renewal process without any problem, the only thing you will have to do afterwards will be register the fingerprint.
So our recommendation is that you contact a lawyer and leave him in charge of everything.
How to renew the NIE during the coronavirus pandemic?
As you already know, your NIE will not expire as long as you renew within 60 days before and up to 90 days after the card expires.
Therefore, within that period, you will be able to renew your card online.
My tourist visa is about to expire and I cannot leave the country, what should I do?
It is very likely that as a foreigner visiting Spain, your tourist visa is about to expire.
Because the borders are closed, you will not be able to leave the country, which will mean that you will become an irregular person in Spain. What to do?
Good news. We can help you. We recommend sending a certified letter to the competent institution requesting to extend your visa for the duration of this situation.
And what happens if you don’t receive a response? In that case, there is no problem. By having sent the request, we understand that you will have justification to avoid future legal problems.
If you want us to guide you on how to proceed in this case, our team of lawyers is at your complete disposal.
Like with any card that expires, we understand that you will have a reasonable period of 15 days to leave the country voluntarily when the state of alarm ends.
These are the tips that we recommend you do. For official information, consult the press release issued by the General Directorate of Migration on Royal Decree 463/2020 of March 14.
How to extend your visa due to Coronavirus?
In the case of a tourist visa, the validity period is extended until the end of the state of alarm. But for this, you must inform the competent authority.
In the case of having a temporary residence card, it is not extended. You must renew it online.
What happens with the procedures in the process?
All procedures or applications in the process to determine if your visa expires in a state of alarm will be resolved. Furthermore, the idea is that they will be resolved quickly in the coming days.
So, if you have sent your application for a temporary residence permit or any other procedure, you will receive a response within the next few days. The process of review and processing of immigration has not been paralysed.
I started an appeal of a procedure and have not yet received a response. It is normal?
Yes, that is completely normal.
As we have already mentioned, all legal and immigration procedures are at a standstill, so government officials will start working on your appeal once the coronavirus crisis is over.
What will happen with the nationality exams?
As we have been in this post, the exams to obtain Spanish citizenship are cancelled.
The CCSE exams in March and April have been postponed to May and June.
On the other hand, the DELE exams for April and May have been cancelled and will be rescheduled as soon as possible.
Do you need more information about your expired visa?
If you want to do any immigration procedure, make sure it has an expert team in the field. At Entre Trámites we invite you to know all our immigration services here. Fill in our contact form and we will call you to help you as soon as possible, schedule a free online consultation or just text our WhatsApp.
