Under local laws, obtaining citizenship requires almost nothing - especially when compared to other countries. All you need to do is show a modest income, gather some fairly straightforward documents, and live in the country legally for 5 years (or just 3 years for families). Last December marked exactly three years since we moved to Uruguay, so we’ve started taking things slowly toward full legalization.
First and biggest challenge is scheduling an appointment with the Electoral Court to submit documents. You can only do this online, strictly once a week, and all the time slots are snapped up in a couple of seconds. This stage took us about half a year: every Monday morning began with frantically refreshing the page and clicking through the form fields.
Second requirement is that you need to provide two citizens as witnesses to your good character. But even for such boring people like us, we managed to find some acquaintances, so it wasn't too much of a hassle.
A couple of months ago, we finally managed to snag an appointment and submit our documents, and last week we had that interview with the witnesses. They asked us the most basic questions about our lives and family composition. The witnesses confirmed what we said and told the same story. My A-1,5 level of Spanish was more than enough to understand everything they asked me. After all the paperwork and formalities were taken care of, a court official came out to us and, smiling, told us to expect an invitation in a few months.
We breathed a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about.