Country-wide policy
Every Venezuelan Visa Is Issued Under a Resolution Made Before the Immigration Act
The joint resolution that defines every class of Venezuelan visa was made in December 1999 by three ministries, and it says on its face which law it was made under: the Ley de Extranjeros and the Regulation of the Ley de Extranjeros. The Ley de Extranjería y Migración of 2004 repealed the Ley de Extranjeros by name, and required the President to make a regulation of the new Act within sixty days of publication. The foreign ministry and the consulates still publish the 1999 catalogue of visas, visa by visa, with the same codes and in most places the same wording. We did not find a regulation made under the 2004 Act. That matters to a reader because it is why the two sets of rules do not line up: the 1999 text names ministries that no longer exist, lets a business visitor stay 180 days where the Act caps a non-migrant at 90 plus 90, and routes the investor through an authority that has been replaced.
Topics it changes
- Visiting as a tourist
- Residency on passive income
- Residency as a retiree
- Residency through work
- Residency through investment
- Residency as a student
- Residency through marriage
- Residency through ancestry
- Residency under a regional treaty
What it requires
- Read the ministry's page and the resolution together. Where they differ, the ministry's page is what the consulate will apply and the resolution is what the instrument says
At a glance
- Instrument that sets the visa classes
- Joint resolution of December 1999
- Law it was made under
- Ley de Extranjeros and its Regulation
- That law was repealed by
- Ley de Extranjería y Migración, 2004
- Deadline the Act set for its own regulation
- Sixty days from publication
- Regulation of the 2004 Act
- Not found
What the law says
«de conformidad con lo dispuesto en los Artículos 40, 41 y 47 del Decreto con Rango y Fuerza de Ley Orgánica de la Administración Central, en el Ordinal 9º del Artículo 11, de la Ley Orgánica del Servicio Consular, en el Artículo 6º de la Ley de Extranjeros y en el Artículo 4º del Reglamento de la Ley de Extranjeros, se resuelve dictar las disposiciones siguientes:»Our translation - not official
In accordance with articles 40, 41 and 47 of the Decree-Law on the Organic Law of the Central Administration, with ordinal 9 of article 11 of the Organic Law of the Consular Service, with article 6 of the Ley de Extranjeros and with article 4 of the Regulation of the Ley de Extranjeros, it is resolved to issue the following provisions:
The resolution's own statement of the law it rests on.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
A commercial legal aggregator holding text-layer PDFs of Venezuelan instruments, each headed with the Gaceta Oficial number and date it reproduces. It is used here for one document that no government host would give us: the joint resolution of December 1999 that defines every class of Venezuelan visa, complete, articles 1 to 49.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: Its archive is frozen in the early 2000s and it tracks no amendments, so it must never be cited as evidence that a text is current: its Código Orgánico Tributario is the 2001 Code repealed in 2020 and its income tax law is the 2001 one, both superseded several times over. It introduces its own errors as well - its 1998 traffic regulation prints the wrong gazette date and renders 'tres (3) años' as 'tres (93) años' - so a figure taken from here needs a second reading before it is published. It must not be cited where a government source exists; the one record resting on it says in its own data that the source is an aggregator.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«Quedan derogadas la Ley de Extranjeros, publicada en la Gaceta Oficial de los Estados Unidos de Venezuela Nº 19.329 de fecha 3 de agosto de 1937»Our translation - not official
The Ley de Extranjeros, published in the Official Gazette of the United States of Venezuela No. 19,329 of 3 August 1937, is repealed.
About this source
The OAS legal portal republishes the constitutions and some statutes of member states. It carries the Constitution of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as Chapter 2 of the Laws of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Revised Edition 1990, printing United Kingdom S.I. 1979 No. 916 as amended by Act 21 of 1986 and Act 15 of 1988 - the only copy of the Vincentian Constitution with a text layer that we could reach, the House of Assembly's own copy being an imageless scan.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It is a republisher and must never be cited for currency: the file is the 1990 edition, while Saint Vincent's own Acts now cite the Revised Edition 2009, in which chapter numbers have moved. The PDF is a two-up optical recognition of a printed book and its text layer carries recognition errors, so every quotation taken from it must be declared as a recognition and must be left with its errors intact. It must not be cited for any instrument other than the one it reproduces.
We re-read it every 365 days. More about this source
«primera. El Presidente de la República, en Consejo de Ministros, reglamentará la presente Ley, dentro de los sesenta (60) días siguientes a su publicación.»Our translation - not official
First: the President of the Republic, in Council of Ministers, shall make a regulation of this Law within sixty (60) days of its publication.
The Act refers twelve separate matters to that regulation, including the requirements and procedure for each category of admission.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The OAS legal portal republishes the constitutions and some statutes of member states. It carries the Constitution of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as Chapter 2 of the Laws of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Revised Edition 1990, printing United Kingdom S.I. 1979 No. 916 as amended by Act 21 of 1986 and Act 15 of 1988 - the only copy of the Vincentian Constitution with a text layer that we could reach, the House of Assembly's own copy being an imageless scan.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It is a republisher and must never be cited for currency: the file is the 1990 edition, while Saint Vincent's own Acts now cite the Revised Edition 2009, in which chapter numbers have moved. The PDF is a two-up optical recognition of a printed book and its text layer carries recognition errors, so every quotation taken from it must be declared as a recognition and must be left with its errors intact. It must not be cited for any instrument other than the one it reproduces.
We re-read it every 365 days. More about this source
«Los requisitos y el procedimiento referentes a la admisión, ingreso, permanencia, salida y reingreso aplicable a cada una de las categorías, así como la determinación de las subcategorías, serán establecidos en el Reglamento de esta Ley.»Our translation - not official
The requirements and procedure for admission, entry, stay, departure and re-entry applicable to each of the categories, and the determination of the subcategories, shall be laid down in the Regulation of this Law.
This is the gap the 1999 resolution is filling in practice.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The OAS legal portal republishes the constitutions and some statutes of member states. It carries the Constitution of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as Chapter 2 of the Laws of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Revised Edition 1990, printing United Kingdom S.I. 1979 No. 916 as amended by Act 21 of 1986 and Act 15 of 1988 - the only copy of the Vincentian Constitution with a text layer that we could reach, the House of Assembly's own copy being an imageless scan.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: It is a republisher and must never be cited for currency: the file is the 1990 edition, while Saint Vincent's own Acts now cite the Revised Edition 2009, in which chapter numbers have moved. The PDF is a two-up optical recognition of a printed book and its text layer carries recognition errors, so every quotation taken from it must be declared as a recognition and must be left with its errors intact. It must not be cited for any instrument other than the one it reproduces.
We re-read it every 365 days. More about this source
«El Visado de Transeúnte de Negocios se otorgará con una vigencia de un (1) año, múltiples entradas, y permitirá permanecer en el país por un período de hasta ciento ochenta (180) días. Agotado dicho término no habrá prórroga para permanecer en el país.»Our translation - not official
The Transient Business visa is granted with a validity of one (1) year, multiple entries, and allows a stay in the country of up to one hundred and eighty (180) days. Once that term is exhausted there is no extension of the stay.
The foreign ministry's page for this same visa says ninety days, and calls it the tourist visa while doing so.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
A commercial legal aggregator holding text-layer PDFs of Venezuelan instruments, each headed with the Gaceta Oficial number and date it reproduces. It is used here for one document that no government host would give us: the joint resolution of December 1999 that defines every class of Venezuelan visa, complete, articles 1 to 49.
Standing: Reports, establishes nothing
Cannot be cited for: Its archive is frozen in the early 2000s and it tracks no amendments, so it must never be cited as evidence that a text is current: its Código Orgánico Tributario is the 2001 Code repealed in 2020 and its income tax law is the 2001 one, both superseded several times over. It introduces its own errors as well - its 1998 traffic regulation prints the wrong gazette date and renders 'tres (3) años' as 'tres (93) años' - so a figure taken from here needs a second reading before it is published. It must not be cited where a government source exists; the one record resting on it says in its own data that the source is an aggregator.
We re-read it every 180 days. More about this source
«El visado de turista se otorgará con una vigencia de un (1) año, múltiples entradas y permitirá permanecer en el país por un período de hasta noventa (90) días. Agotado dicho término no habrá prórroga para permanecer en el país.»Our translation - not official
The tourist visa is granted with a validity of one (1) year, multiple entries, and allows a stay in the country of up to ninety (90) days. Once that term is exhausted there is no extension of the stay.
This paragraph is on the ministry's page for the business visa, not the tourist visa. It gives ninety days where the resolution gives one hundred and eighty.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The foreign ministry, which runs the consular network that issues every Venezuelan visa. Its services pages list the thirteen visa classes it issues and give, for each, a description, the documents required and the validity and permitted stay. It is the only current statement of what a Venezuelan consulate will actually ask for, and it is a required counterweight to the 1999 resolution: between them they show where the practice has moved.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: Not the instrument, and it must never be quoted as one. Its pages paraphrase the 1999 joint resolution and in several places depart from it: the business visa is given ninety days where the resolution gives one hundred and eighty, and is called the tourist visa while doing so; the entrepreneur visa's terms are introduced as the rentista's; the family visa accepts a marriage celebrated in Venezuela, which the resolution does not; and it lists one visa class, the Transeúnte Familiar Migrante Permanente, that is in no article of the resolution. It publishes no fee - every page says the consular tariff must be asked of the particular mission - and no list of visa-exempt nationalities. The embassy and consulate sites under embajada.gob.ve and consulado.gob.ve are run from the same platform and must not be cited at all for visa descriptions: several of them still carry Lorem ipsum placeholder text where the description should be.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
We looked for a regulation of the 2004 Act in the National Assembly's own database of laws in force, on the foreign ministry's consular pages, on the migration service's pages and in the Supreme Court's legislation section. We did not find one. That is a statement about where we looked, not a finding that none exists.
The resolution has its own drafting errors on the ministry's pages as well: the entrepreneur visa's terms are introduced on the ministry's page with the words 'el visado de transeúnte rentista'.