Preciso esclarecer umas dúvidas sobre permanência...

Hello CaptainCrundle,

Without any public notice whatsoever the Federal Police have increased all their fees and fines.

You've got the list of GRUs right but now the new fees are; R$168.13, R$106.45 and R$204,77 for a new total of R$479.35 (USD $160).

To answer your other questions:

1. All copies must be "cópia autenticado" certified copies.

2. You copy your passport at the Cartório here in Brazil, because it has to show your current entry as well. Depending on the Cartório they'll only copy one open (back-to-back) passport page to each page of copy paper, or if they will copy more they charge as if individual pages anyway. This alone is one of the biggest costs of the whole process. A real pain in the tush, since in many DPF delegacies, once they've seen the blank pages they throw them out or return them to you, but you have to copy them all anyway.

3.  The Certified Criminal Record (FBI) Check has been replaced by a Declarção Sob Pena da Lei de Não Condenação that the DPF will provide you and you fill in the blanks and take to the Cartório to notarize. That saves time and money.

4. Just remember ALL Declarations that must have a signature notarized for the Policia Federal, they will only accept "Reconhecimento da firma por AUTENTICIDADE". They DO NOT accept the less expensive "Reconhecimento da firma por semelhança". So you have to make sure to specify that to the Cartório.

5. You really need the Birth Certificate for the marriage process, which is much more complex than the permanency is. Your Birth Certificate, must be the long form (a.k.a. Registration of Birth) that shows your parents' complete names, ages and place of birth too. That MUST BE ISSUED within the 180 days prior to submission to the Consulado-Geral do Brasil that has jurisdiction over you city in the USA. In most cases the Cartório you get married in is going to keep the ORIGINAL of both the BC and the sworn tanslation (which must be done here in Brazil), so when you take them the documents for the marriage make sure to ask them to make at least two certified copies of each for future use.

6. Read the following topic thread for documents and explanation of the marriage process:

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=280525

Cheers,
James         Expat-blog Experts Team

Wow! Thanks for the awesome reply, James!

I had a busy weekend travelling with my family, but have some time to sit back down and get all these hiccups out of the way to make sure all my ducks are in a row before I leave in October.

I feel much more confident now, knowing these "up to date" answers. Especially knowing that I don't have to have an only-90-days-old background check is reassuring, too! That sounded like an enormous headache.

Once again, thank you so much, and I hope that others who stumble upon this post find your answers helpful!