Normally we can’t know it until we receive the final approval email. But if your lawyer maintains a good relationship with AIMA, they may likely know where your file is.
Well it finally happened. I got approval June 18th, 2024 after 43 months of waiting.
Timeline: Oct 2021 application, May 2022 Preapproval, Jan 2023 Lisbon biometrics, June 2025 approval. No lawsuits, as I didn’t believe in the process.
Now Novobanco has done something to my bank account which renders it useless as I never got a notice about updating details, so apparently they’ve just frozen my account, so now will have to pay a fee to have lawyers pay for the fee. The gift that keeps on giving.
At least I’ll do the 2 years, but this whole thing has been such a mess, mentally taxing, a complete failure in building any trust with the legal frameworks around immigration, and a total disappointment of what was promised as a 10 month visa with a fast track to citizenship, which now has become more expensive, kept my life in limbo for nearly 4 years, and now, moving the goal post for citizenship. Let’s see how many months it takes to ‘print the card’, and how many mistakes the card will have on it.
Does anyone know of a bank without fees that I can open only for the need of receiving the IMT tax back on the property investment I did? Lawyers are saying that I need to have a Portugese based bank account in order to receive that tax back for the developers. I do not need an account, so need the most basic pathetic freebie to fulfill the need of this.
Wonder if it adheres to whatever they need in order to remit the IMT repayment from the government… I’ll check witht he lawyers and hopefully this is the answer! Thank you!
I had the same issue with the Novobanco. Its for most banks now as it requires a very lengthy OTP which you cannot receive on non Portuguese phone numbers. I had to update my phone number to a Portuguese number and I visited the bank to get a new matrix card issued to the new number.
My lawyers paid my DUC without charging me any thing extra. Even my property management company had to pay my State tax as I was without my bank account for few months. Any attempts to get the documents updated via their APIC email went without any results.
Despite all the gloomy predictions of dark clouds on the horizon, AIMA managed to surprise me once again: after an e-mail form my attorney and a registered return-receipt-requested letter from me, I received a new card today with the correct NIF! It only took just short of three months to correct the clerical error.
