It seems like SEF has gotten religion about starting to solve these backlog issues. The scheduling policy changes seem to be bearing fruit. This pilot may not have been a success but they may carry on with other improvements behind the scenes, like hiring more immigration officials or reducing the full lifecycle labor burden of processing immigrants (e.g. automatic online renewals).
Years ago, early in my career, the city announced a free giveaway of energy efficient fixtures. Show up at city hall at 6 AM and don’t be early! I arrived 30 minutes early to find an insane zoo: cars queued up for a mile, dozens of police directing traffic away from the area. But personal experience is the best teacher; lessons need to be relearned in each place and generation.
Hello there,
I submitted my application along with my wife on January 2021, was approved on april, my wife was approved on june. Still waiting for Sef appointment.
I had applied for my parents to come as dependents in Nov 2020, and we just got our SEF appointment on Feb 1st of this year. Hope this proves helpful. Good luck as I have done waiting game, and know it’s not fun
Did anyone get an auto-booking lately? Wondering when the 2021 Q1’s are booking for…May, June?
From SEF:
Starting today, those interested with ARI applications, for the first quarter of 2021, will begin to be notified by the Foreign and Border Service (SEF) to schedule, for a total of about 2021 of 1.800 applications.
It is recalled that on December 15, the SEF began scheduling in chronological order to grant ARI, having already notified about 4.200 citizens.
The SEF is thus continuing in an ongoing effort to ensure fair and transparent access to their services.
Yes, @Deiter . My attorney contacted me this week to say that he had received an invitation to book a family reunification appointment for us. We looked at the SEF site with him and we settled on a mutually convenient location, date and time. It took just a couple minutes to do the booking and I am very thankful they’ve migrated to this new process.
My own biometrics appointment was in the fall, so things are moving along. Just be patient.
Yes, if your appointments are staggered, your cards, your renewals, your citizenship application, your citizenship will all be staggered. Makes for a lot of trips to PT for biometrics each renewal if you aren’t there yet.
I’m sorry I can’t answer that. We wanted to go in April/May and there was one appointment left in the office we preferred to visit in April, lots in May. We picked one and that was all I saw. The selections are hierarchical and we only looked at a tiny bit: 1 location, 2 months, a few days and that was it.
When we booked earlier this week, appointments for January Feb, and March were only available in the Azores. We wanted to pick a date that worked with kids’ school holidays so ended up booking a slot in April in Lisbon.
After a year of waiting, our attorney has obtained an appointment for our biometrics - coming up in March 2022, in Faro. We submitted our documents back in December 2020 and received preliminary approval in March 2021.
@anon96873084 - you had mentioned that you had issues securing shengen visa in Inidia as the Portugal embassy was not processing.
I am in a similar situation as I need visa to travel to Portugal but the embassy in my home country is not processing schengen visa at this time (due to Covid-19 restrictions which they are yet to relax).
I read in this post that you have been able to do your biometrics? I am curious to know how you were able to overcome the schengen visa challenges?
Did you have to apply for the schengen visa through another country? Any issues coming into Portugal?
Also keen to learn from other people on the forum who might have been in similar situation and how they overcome it.
Best option is to contact your local embassy directly (in my case I had to send repeated emails forcing them to email me back) and let them know about your situation. They will process your case, specially if you have a confirmed SEF appointment.
Status Update: Pre-approval in May 2021. Just got an e-mail from the lawyer confirming biometric appointment at the end of April 2022. Finally some light at the end of the tunnel…
I wrote to my local Embassy even before my SEF confirmation was confirmed. They were understanding enough and provided me with expedited legalization (attestation) and visa appointments. Just explain to them the situation and they should accommodate someone who is an investor in their country.
But personal experience is the best teacher; lessons need to be relearned in each place and generation.