You will have to appear at several different government offices in person, to do things such as have your fingerprints taken, have a photograph taken, and sign some documents. That's basically it.
Some of these offices are very close to each other (walking distance), others are a short car journey away, and all are in Downtown Asuncion, relatively close to the Presidential Palace, Congress, Central Bank, etc. We can arrange for all of this to be done on the same day - you can expect it to take a few hours, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon - and we're doing this with our clients several days a week anyway, so you'll have plenty of choices when deciding which particular day is most convenient for you. You can expect to be in a small group of other residency applicants - typically 2 - 8 people at a time, so you'll probably have a chance to meet some other people from around the world who are also new residents of Paraguay.
The absolute earliest this can possibly be done is the day after you arrive in Paraguay, if you planned it with us in advance, and couriered your Apostilled documents to us and paid the fee in advance. If you're not in quite so much of a hurry, we can usually book you in for this day with between 1-to-2 weeks' notice, depending on how many slots we have available over the coming days (and your own availability).
Once this in-person day of meeting the government is complete, you can leave Paraguay if you wish, and come back again at any time within the next six months to collect your Residency Card and complete the rest of the residency process. Alternatively, you can stay in Paraguay and enjoy yourself like everyone else here.
Preparing for meeting the government
It's important to note that there are quite a lot of things which need to be done in preparation for this day, mostly paperwork. However, we will do all of this for you, so you don't need to do anything other than turn up in the right place at the right time.
Some of the things that we will be doing for you include:
(a) Completing all the relevant forms (in Spanish)
(b) Making the right number of copies for all your documents and forms, getting them certified by public notaries with the right level of authority, and putting them in the correct order for civil servants to make things happen quickly
(c) Paying the various official fees for the various process requirements, and obtaining the correct receipts
(d) Making sure you sign documents in the right places, at the right time (some need to be witnessed, some don't)
(e) Massively reducing the time you need to spend doing things in person
(f) Checking everything done by each civil servant, so that any mistakes by them at any stage of the process are fixed immediately, rather than a different civil servant in a different government department discovering them at some point in future and slowing everything down
All fees - government fees, public notary fees, photocopying fees, our own fees, etc - are included in the one overall price of $1,450 per person that you pay to us at the start of your residency application process. There are no additional costs for anything.
Summary
We will prepare everything needed, meet you at the first government office of the day, take you to the other government offices later in the day, and make sure that everything you need to do in person is done quickly and correctly, so that you only need to take one day away from your normal work/travel/Netflix schedule etc.
With just one day spent meeting the government in various offices, you just need to wait a short while for Step 4: Collect Your Residency Card.