By allilopez
Part of living or studying abroad for an extended period of time is going through the dreadful process of registering with the Brazilian Federal Police (or DPF, as it is known by its initials in Portuguese). All foreigners staying in Brazil for more than 90 days must register with the Federal Police within 30 days from the date one enters the country.
Besides being rather pricey (R$200 or $60 USD when I went), the whole process is rather tedious. You have to fill out the DPF form online and print it out twice (the first time you have to fill it out with one code and the second time with another). Then you have to go to the bank and pay the R$200 (I think the price has now gone up to R$600). Afterwards you need to gather your passport, a notarized copy of all your passport pages (except for the blank ones), 2 recent standard 3 cm x 4 cm color photos, your Entrance card (the white form that you filled out on the plane on your way to Brazil), a copy of the original visa application, the Federal Police Form, and the proof of payment of the two fees. Luckily for me, CIEE took care of everything short of actually paying the registration fees. Nonetheless, the whole process can be rather daunting, which is why I would advise students wanting to study abroad in Brazil to do this with a program. I do not know about other programs, but I know CIEE does a very good job of making things easier for students.
After all this, you need to schedule an appointment to go to the Federal Police in Brazil, which can take a while, so you should not leave this until the last possible minute. When the day came for us to go to the Federal Police, CIEE rented a bus and took us there. Fortunately, the wait was long but not THAT long. Prior to getting to the Federal Police station, I had heard horror stories of waiting four or five hours to be called on, so I was happily surprised when the whole process took less than two hours for our group of ten –from the moment they called us up and asked us our basic information to the moment when they took our pictures and our fingerprints. But then again, when it comes to Brazil and the government bureaucracy you really never know.