Very happy for you…but a bit jealous too.
@apsinghmd , My lawyer sent mail to AIMA a month before submitting a lawsuit requesting for an update and our intentions on the lawsuit. We think current progress is a result of mail sent. I was told this step is mandatory before submitting a lawsuit. We received our family biometrics appointment after a month of sending mail.
@sen , I don’t think AIMA received any instruction from the court as my lawsuit is still not reviewed yet.
@rawadgebrael , we are having the same problem. We noticed this two weeks before our initial biometrics appointment and I was concerned that this might cause issues during fingerprints. My lawyer went to AIMA offices (her office is opposite to the AIMA Lisbon branch) and the AIMA response was “Platform is not updated” and no need to worry.
I enquired a few law firms and we decided to go ahead with this lawyer and was very happy with her guidance and progress we have seen and I highly recommended.
FWIW, our lawyer says AIMA is not notified unless:
- the Administrative Court accepts your initial suit (i.e. no “preliminary rejection,” which rumour has it is becoming more common)
- or you win an appeal ordering a hearing of your initial lawsuit
Hi, thanks for sharing. Was your investment in real estate or something else?
280k real estate investment
One can only hope that suddenly the government doesnt decide to retroactively cancel the GV scheme and cancel all the GV applications in the “awaiting pre-appoval” queue. At least now there is still hope even if we have to be extremely patient
Interesting! If I’m understanding correctly, it seems the threat of a lawsuit got AIMA to act before the lawsuit itself?
Found this news article from 2 days ago. Not sure if it was shared here before or if it has any bearing on us GV process prisoners
Update: There is an article today too about the same thing
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Anyone want to place money on whether AIMA prioritizes all visas ahead of ARI? 400,000 total cases in the queue; 395,000 before they get to ARI 
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I have some good news for my fellow GV applicants awaiting pre-approval: According to my IAS attorney, AIMA has begun evaluating June 2022 applications! She wasn’t able to give us a timeline for review of our November 2022 submission, but I’m thrilled that AIMA appears to have moved past December 2021 applications. Has anybody heard this news as well?
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Not yet. But if so, positive development. Keeping fingers crossed though. Even if you are right, no one knows when they might again hit pause and for how long.
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We also dont know if chronological order will survive all the new aima employees
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I did learn today that friends of ours whose applications were filed several months after ours (we filed June 2022) have been given an October biometrics appointment. They recently filed suit, and were successful, most likely because they bought a small house near Porto in late 2021. But, because nothing is easy with this process, they need new background checks with apostille, and the State Department has informed them that it takes four weeks.
Yes the documents always need to be up to date according to Portugal’s standards. Luckily they can attend the biometrics first and mail in the documents once ready, provided their lawyer informs AIMA that the documents are coming.
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Good to know, thank you.
It’s best to be prepared with all documents up to date at the time of biometrics - could potentially save some time to the final approval. IIRC, most documents are valid for 6 months, so you can plan accordingly. Observing the database here, plus lawyers’ feedback can give you a rough estimate for how likely your biometrics are within the next 6 months. That’s perhaps a bit speculative, otherwise, definitely start the process once the biometrics are scheduled - there’s often a few weeks’ time there in between to the biometrics day.
I think FBI checks are only valid 90 days, and those are also the slowest to be apostilled…
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I thought that the PT GV had the 90 day expiration date for the FBI background document. hopefully they move “quickly” lol…
From an earlier post on a similar topic about document validity…:
" Just to summarize:
- birth cert = 12 months
- marriage cert = 6 months
- police cert = 3 months
- tax declaration of no debt = 45 days
- social security declaration of no debt or no record = 45 days
Other documents have no validity term requirements."
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I love that birth certificates “expire”.
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Thanks for the correction! At 3 months, the best approach then would be to be prepared and apply for FBI checks right when the biometrics is scheduled. Hopefully, it’ll be done before your biometrics appointment, but even if not, you can send it across soon after.
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