Chile Forum

First time poster, longtime lurker. Thank you for the good information I have been reading.

My situation is this. I am retired US military, no dependents, with prior experience inside Chile while in a Special Forces training exchange with the Chilean military. That experience was generally positive. There were some unfortunate exceptions for cheap talk later. In other words, Chile is just another Latin American country and I have had my ass kicked a little already. My eyes were opened and it was good to get that done early in the ballgame.

Did some work also in Honduras, Colombia, and in Panama years ago so I have seen the mud and the mountains of other Latin American countries. Even though knowledge of the SF exchange training is generally in the public domain I think details will show up on wikileaks some day anyway. There was open press talk about our involvement in reconstruction work in Latin America and that experience is going to be useful in my future. SF isn’t just shooters and snake-eaters. For what it’s worth I should probably be insulted by admin’s statements about soldiers being young and stupid but we’ll see how things go. If he wants to give everyone the GPS coordinates of the server I am using in Los Angeles, California, and kick me out right now, that’s his right and prerogative as owner of this site and I respect that.

Qualifications -> Spanish, yes, check. Read, write, speak at what the Army calls DLPT/ILR Level 3, which means moderate proficiency, though it’s a little heavy on words like cazabobos for obvious reasons.

Prep -- > Yes, I have made some short survey trips around southern Chile. Somebody is going to say “why Chile” and that is actually a smart challenge. I already understand the high costs in Chile, and many of the other why-not shortcomings and disadvantages that allchile contributors have written so much about. The why-yes includes a lot of cards I am holding closely for now but peace+quiet+rural+garden has a lot to do with it. Those who wish to speculate about the possibility of a chilena, go ahead and speculate, the answer is negative for now.

Through the US embassy in Santiago and a JAG friend I have contacted a reliable Chilean attorney with whom I have a contract to periodically receive US funds and he will distribute those funds for me and give me monthly accounting, and also a Chilean ATM card. He has basically set me up as a separate business account which does not even require that I provide a RUT (although I do have one now). I think the costs for this are reasonable and this solves the Chilean banking problems until I get full permanent residency and eventually dual citizenship. I checked this arrangement with two other Chilean attorneys and a proxy financial existence of this sort appears to be completely legal.

Since my retirement status was “enlisted” rather than “officer” I don’t believe that I have the same statutory problems that officers would have, in the area of receiving a military retirement while eventually becoming non-US. Yes, it makes a difference. And that is the heart of the question to this forum. It is a specialized area and I am not inviting answers from people who just want to speculate, so please don’t just guess, cite the USCs and the Regs by chapter and verse. I appreciate people’s opinions but I don’t need people telling me how the US has its fangs and fingers in everybody’s banking systems and bla bla bla – we all know that much. I am not trying to conceal anything, just to get my checks deposited where I will need them.

Background - a retired US service member receives a monthly retirement payment through DFAS, but DFAS apparently won’t make an automatic deposit to a Chilean bank, though they do make such automatic payments to retirees in Korea, to Korean banks (likewise to banks in DomRep, Poland, South Africa, UK, Australia, Greece, etc but not Chile). What I would like is real, honest experience and knowledge from other retired US military who truly understand how to legally go about the transition. Might as well make it in the open because there are no secrets once it leaves the keyboard. Specifically, how to preserve a US military retirement pension while becoming first a dual national and finally a mono-national not under US jurisdiction. Again: a legal transition for retired US military, safeguarding US income while going from US mono-national to dual-national to Chilean mono-national. Hell, that is a topic that should have a large audience. If I missed discussion of this on some allchile thread then I apologize.

The steps as far as dual national are fairly easy. It gets murky when you are receiving retirement from DFAS and other US retirement sources and then drop the “dual” part of citizenship and become only a citizen of Chile -- especially if you are former US military with top secret clearance and sensitive operations experience. There is a way, a path, a series of steps. It has been done. It isn’t easy. It must be completely legal. Thank you for the consideration and forgive my writing too much and perhaps a bit rudely.