Actually my wife and daughter’s bio-metrics were for Family Reunification only, which are getting processed quickly. For primary applicants I believe, the nightmarish delays persist.
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Lawyers have received dependents card, dated July 5. Valid for 2 years.
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Folks, any ideas how long it takes for Coimbra office to produce/deliver cards from final approval date ?
Hi, when was the final DCU paid for dependents cards ? wanted to know how long its taking .
Did you file a lawsuit?
Final approval June 19, DUC paid June 21, card printed (validity) July 5, card received by lawyers July 18.
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was this from Lisbon center your final approval ?
Is it just me, or does it appear that the trickle of final approvals has now dried up once again?
Porto AIMA
It’s getting close to August, when the entire country goes on vacations, AIMA including (backlog or not). Indeed, the approvals have trickled down to… nothing!
I suspect that the reduced rate for final approvals is due to all the lawsuits. The limited AIMA bandwidth has just shifted from processing the applications in order of biometrics appointments to order of judgments received from courts
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I suspect same to be the case - especially when coupled with the summer break, there is very little bandwidth left for anything else…
I have a friend who is waiting for her final approval since early Jan 2023 from Lisbon.
There needs to be an intervention - I know that her lawyers has told her that it is worst than the Covid times.
This needs a systematical correction; if the current accumulation of backlog continues, there will be the point when the current bandwidth will not be sufficient even for the cases coming through lawsuits.
If you do not plan to live full-time in PT, what’s the hassle with delayed initial card, after they announced waiting time counts towards citizenship? I think the best timing is having the 1st card on the 4th or 5th year, so that you’d have plenty of time to apply for citizenship within the period of validity . You might also have the chance not to renew it as long as citizenship request pasted stage 4. Imagine if you get your 1st card on the 3rd year, by the time you are eligible for citizenship application , very likely you must go through card renewal first and we all know that’s just another episode…The current auto-renewal has lots of limitations for ARI.
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I debated this a bit too before requesting renewal. I mean, hey, if my 5 year clock is ticking and I don’t actually need to go there, then why bother paying the renewal fee? I ended up doing it because the renewal fee is eur177 and it’s auto-renew and I’m at the 3 year mark already (bonus year free!) and given that the fee might end up getting corrected and auto-renew might go away… meh.
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That’s still an “IF” on the 5 year clock. It’s not certain if it starts before final approval or not.
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I thougth worst case the clock started at biometrics, when we did the official application. Why would it start at final approval?
Well, I have an outstanding suit to speed up the final approval, and still no movement for over two months. It is really hard to say.
I do believe, however, that AIMA is concentrating on “low-hanging fruit” first, so to speak. These are family re-unifications, lusophones, and other numerous yet “simple” cases for them to tackle. They could proclaim much better processing speed in this manner and look better at the next parliamentary grilling.
Unfortunately, few GV applicants are not as simple for them and not their top priority.
GV dependents are technically also “family reunification” but they don’t seem to be getting any priority unfortunately 
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One thing I have never understood is why 3 separate examinations of all the supporting documents for a GV application are deemed necessary. In my case everything required for approval was submitted originally, including signed CPCV for the house purchase and apostilled and translated documents where required. No good reason why the initial approval for such an applicant should be preliminary and not final. Then at my biometrics appointment 15 months later I sat and watched as my attorney walked the (then SEF) agent through my entire file, which now included an updated very recently issued apostilled and translated FBI background check to replace the now expired original one. The only thing that really needed to be done was to check that I still owned the house I bought (trivial to do since my attorney had copies of all the municipal taxes I had been paying twice a year) and check to see if I had any criminal record in Portugal (also trivial since there is an online system for that). So instead of putting my file away for another year and a half they could have taken 15 minutes to do those things and issued final approval right then. Where does this stupid f—-ing three step process come from? Especially considering that the process for approving a D7 takes place right at the same single appointment used for biometrics! Seriously! Yes, work is done outside of Portugal for a D7 (actually by a company called VFS I believe, rather than the Portuguese consulate) but nothing more extensive than is done for the initial GV approval from what I can see. And there are plenty of things to check for a D7: background check, rental contract or other proof of accommodation, proof of sufficient passive income, etc.
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D7 people are not bringing money into the country and holding it there while this processing happens. So there is no win to take a long time for them.
GV applicants bring money and hold it in Portugal for 5 years, and before this Mas Habitacion, delays only work in favor of the country. So delays are welcome - not for the applicant but for the government.
But I may be giving too much credit to someone in government for being very strategic about this whole thing.
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