Could you please let us know how you found out that appointments were being opened?
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Itās not atypical either. My lawyer had a colleague attend my appointment because it was too far away and all the lawyers in her office were otherwise occupied. The handful of lawyers in the Azores must be making bank on this.
I imagine this may not have been true before, but that good firms are doing it now in order to get the job done since having your staff run across the country on short notice isnāt always practical and having someone local pop over to the local office to do something so plug-n-chug is far cheaper than the travel time. (Just driving from Lisboa to Faro and back, figure EUR 50 in tolls and EUR 50 in gas plus EUR 10 parking, forget staff billable time at EUR 100-150/hr to sit in a carā¦)
They announced it on their Facebook page
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I donāt do Facebook. Would you mind providing a link? Is it the SEFās FB page, or something else?
Thanks
Hereās their FB page:
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appointments are open.
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Right now?
they are all gone. All of December opened up and i understand it was gone in a few minutes.
Damn, and here I am less than a week away (hopefully) from submitting my application for pre-approval 
Hopefully I can snag one in the next batch or grab a last minute cancellation!
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Fear not, for you have not missed aught - you have many, many weeks to wait between your application submission and any hint of a pre-approvalā¦ SEF processing time for initial application?
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Oof haha, for some reason I missed that. Welp! Hopefully I am ready for the feb/march appt drop haha
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Hi Jim,
Thanks for the update. Do you know if besides a new valid apostilled FBI fingerprinting report, a valid marriage certificate is requested at the time of the biometrics appointment or the one submitted with the application to SEF which is expired at the time of the biometrics appointment is enough?
The consensus of numerous GV lawyers, borne out by several anecdotes posted over the last year, is that your odds of success are best if you provide a complete set of up-to-date documents at the time of submission and again at the time of the biometrics appointment.
If your initial application is incomplete or your documents are expired, it may be bounced back into the unsubmitted state without notice or explanation. That would be quite painful if it delayed a successful submission into the new year; the costs will be higher from 2022 onward.
The full set of physical documents is required at the biometrics appointment. If the documents are incomplete or expired, processing may be paused until the missing documents are delivered to SEF, and it will be a whileāmaybe a monthābefore they get around to reviewing your file again.
I was worried about that, too, but on my list of documents needed was the translated and apostilled marriage license, with no date or timeline specified. Our attorney is submitting the apostilled/translated marriage license I submitted to her last year, along with our other original documents. Fingers crossed that suffices.
In an ideal world every applicant would show up with 100% of their documents in perfect order. My guess is the majority of applicants have at least one item missing that they need to provide.
Thankful they have my biometrics so everything else can be handled remotely.
There appears to be a huge āit dependsā on this.
The documents are supposed to be within the time guidelines. That said, because of the circumstances, when we went to my wifeās appointment, her fingerprint document had expired by a few days - itās just how the timing worked out, and we had no time to do anything about it. We knew that going in, and were just there to get the biometrics done since lawyer was confident theyād do that much. However, the clerk didnāt notice and accepted it anyway without comment. Lawyer said āwho knows, they didnāt notice, they may let it goā and suggested saving the $170 until it actually gets bounced. Itās made sense to wait simply because her application is sitting in the pile a month behind mine and itās already taken two months to get to mine so if weād gone out and done it again right away itād probably have expired again before they even got to noticing and asking for the replacement. 
Esp with turnaround times at Monument getting better finally.
This actually makes sense, thinking more about it. If the intake clerk doesnāt notice, is the person processing the application really going to go back and do all the math to determine āhey, it was expired at the time of submission by a weekā, especially if thatās the job of the intake clerk, given that by the time any of these applications get to that agent theyāre all going to be expired by some significant time period?
In your case, it was noticed by the intake clerk who is sitting around waiting for the documents. Maybe they will allow some grace, maybe not.
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My recent experience with an appointment:
My lawyer provided the SEF employee with originals of exactly what had been uploaded to the SEF site through the application process. He didnāt offer newer versions of anything I brought. That included my criminal record search with apostille and translation, marriage license with apostille and translation, newer utility bill etc. I was waiting outside and was asked to come in to sign one document and have biometrics taken. We left.
Two weeks later they requested 3 things: an update-to-date criminal record search, better evidence of my entry into Portugal (probably because I arrived via a third country) and one other document the lawyer needs to obtain from Portugalās Social Security office, because they come submitted was stale. They stipuladed that he had 20 days to provide them, and he can easily do that. The copies of the documents, verified as true copies by my lawyer, need to be delivered by mail. Another appointment is not needed.
They didnāt ask for the marriage license to be updated, probably because itās part of the family reunion application. Itās important to have the background check up to date because itās unlikely you could get that prepared in under 20 days because of the apostille delays.
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Entry for your biometrics appointment, I assume?
Quick update on recent SEF biometrics experience:
Last week Jake had his biometrics appointment in Coimbra. He had both the original FBI report (apostilled, translated) that was filed with the application in January 2021 (so outdated), as well as his refreshed FBI report dated 10/15/21 (apostilled, translated). The SEF agent only wanted the refreshed ones. For informational purposes, our attorney asked what would have happened if he had only had the original, outdated ones. She said she would have gone ahead and taken biometrics and he would have had 20 days (business days I believe) to submit updated ones. Of course, weāre glad that we had refreshed them to avoid that delay (not to mention the stress of getting a new FBI report and having it apostilled and translated in that timeframe).
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Ventured to Portugal early June of 21 on Lawyerās assurance that she could get us 2 appointments. Lawyer clicked return key until she got us 1 in Tavira and 1 in Portimao. Went to both with lawyer with all documents minus expired apostliled FBI BG check. After successful biometric Lawyer told us the process was on hold until we submitted a new apostiled FBI BG. All she said was we need to do it as soon as we can. Went home. Applied for FBI BG. Received and submitted for apostile. 5 weeks later apostiled documents received. Sent to Lisbon beginning of August. Received Tavira card Monday this week. Still waiting on Portimao.
Another couple we know, and saw while in Pt, had the exact same timeline, and Lawyer, and their card from Lisbon appointment was received on October 13th. Their card from Portimao is still waiting.
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