According to their FB page, SEF is now up to 2020 Q4. They also gave some numbers for how many applications that is:
Starting this Tuesday, those interested with ARI applications, for the fourth quarter of 2020, will begin to be notified by the Foreign and Border Service (SEF) to schedule. Overall, there are about 1.680 applications, thereby completing all applications submitted by the end of 2020.
It is recalled that the SEF began on 15 December scheduling in chronological order to grant ARI, and citizens whose application was accepted until September 2020 have already been notified, i.e. more than 2.500 notifications
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised to see many first world countries open to Ellis island style immigration in the next few decades.
Off topic but I saw a pretty convincing article about how the us constitution doesn’t allow the government to restrict immigration, since it wasn’ta delegated power.
to come, plus SEF biometrics opening in July 2020, Sept , Oct - Nov 2021, it is reasonable to believe that vast majority of backlog appointement scheduling upto the end of 2020 will be completed very soon.
I don’t think this is correct. What I am hearing on the ground is that SEF is now scheduling for the February/March timeframe. Although SEF is doing an amazing job and has issued many invitations for appointments, many of those invited are unable to confirm/attend because of visa and/or travel issues with their home countries.
Need advice. We are a family of 4. our lawyers received an invite to book appointments for the two of us. We have an appointment for next week. There is no information on the other two. Any chance they will do biometrics for all of us if we land up there? I am asking because it’s a pain traveling from where we are and we have to quarantine on return. A
Application with two people was submitted in September 2020 and two were added on in December. The December ones have not received an invitation to book.
Madhulika
You are at the mercy of the person working at SEF on that day. Maybe they will allow your entire family but I think probably not. Ask your lawyer to be sure. If you are going anyway, I suggest it is worth to try to show up and plead with them, but only your lawyer can advise you on this since they will be the ones making this case to the gatekeeper at SEF.
Does the SEF staff member doing the bio-metrics have any discretion to allow an additional family member, whose appointment was not scheduled, to do the bio-metrics on the same day as other family members ?
In theory they could but I don’t recall seeing any cases here of anyone saying that it’d ever actually happened in recent memory. Maybe someone will differ. I guess it’s a question of how much of a cost/benefit tradeoff there is, versus how long you can stay and whether you want to bet on cancellations as well, versus the pain of the traveling, versus the pain of having to come back.
Speaking from personal experience – and everything below is a “it depends… on the office and the agent.”
If someone has an appointment in the same office and same day, chance is high.
If someone has an appointment in the same office but another day, chance is medium (see note below).
If someone has an appointment in another office chance is low.
if someone has no appointment at all anywhere, chance seems super low.
For my case – note the following are all non-investor members:
1st member has an appointment in Guarda on Day 1
2nd member has an appointment in Guarda on Day 2
3rd member has an appointment in Lisbon on Day 3
The agent for that 1st member would NOT take the 2nd member, so my lawyer was puzzled and not happy. The 2nd day, another agent learned about what happened and was surprised that 1st agent didn’t do it (meaning this 2nd agent would have done it). So go figure.
The 3rd member, lawyer said, has no chance to go do biometrics in that office and had to do it in Lisbon.
All that said, pre-COVID, my lawyers suggested that in certain offices they would let the whole family (with appointments later / different dates) join the investor (hence they always book investors as 1st appointment). But of course this picture perfect scenario never happened to me nor most of us on this forum : <
