We had submitted on 22 Dec , God knows when should we expect our approval??
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Just got the information from my lawyer that my application is approved. P lease send me the google sheet application so I can update
Appilcation 22 Nov 2021
Fee paid 23 Nov 2021
Approval 15 Jul 2022
Dependant Application 2 people on 4th July 2022 and 1 person on 5th July 2022
Fee paid 6th July 2022
Approval awaited
Delayed application for my family because my lawyer was waiting for the pre-approval prior to applying for my family. Since there was a delay in my pre-approval we went ahead to apply but could not since the portal was closed in 2022
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Congratulations! 
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Ours is a family of four.
Application made and fees paid: 23 Nov 2021
Received my Pre- Approval yesterday 15 Jul 2022.
There’s hope after all!
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Congratulations!
This is great! Thanks for sharing the stats. I hope we start seeing December approvals by August.
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Can you send me this link please?
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Hi all. Wanted to share my timeline since I just was pre-appproved.
SEF Application: 24 November 2021
Pre-approval: 18 July 2022
I’ve also submitted this to the form for tracking purposes.
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Congrats!!!
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Progress! Thanks for sharing!
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Was your lawyer able to get an appointment for Biometrics?
Congratulations!
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Our family received pre-approval today! Here is our timeline:
Applicant applied 21 Nov 21
Spouse and dependent child applied 10 Dec 21.
Pre-approval received for all 3 applicants: 20 July 21.
Our lawyer informed us that we are now waiting for the SEF to email an invitation to schedule biometric appointment.
I will put this information in the database.
Cheers,
Carolyn
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Did your lawyer say how longbit’ll take? Mine has no clue
I don’t think our lawyer has a clue either!
It appears (take that with a grain of salt) that SEF has opened up appointments for those who applied prior to October 1, 2021. A bunch of slots opened up in late June for that group. Decent chance you’d be in the next wave if you applied in November 2021 - but no idea how long that will be. There was about a 4 month gap between the last two open windows.
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So we got our appointment Tuesday (19 July) after a little over a year we got the pre-approval. Our lawyer said to expect 6-7 more months before approval. We still owe them background checks, a minor’s birth certificate which takes 60 days, marriage certificate, and NIF non-debt disclosure. We are told these can be extended and don’t impact the timing on issuance of the visa.
I’ve got some other observations on this leg of the process.
American beaureaucracy can be every bit as bad as other countries. The US is not the beacon of efficient government where you need something, only when they want something from you. 60 days for a birth certificate that never changes is ridiculous. Further to have to pay $50 every time when a marriage certificate from the same county can be obtained in 10 minutes for $10 is annoying.
We have lawyers and did our biometrics in Lisbon at Av. António Augusto (not sure if there are other locations). We got there early because I didn’t want to screw it up and have to get back in line if we were a minute late. It was utter chaos. Nobody knew what was happening. There was every walk of life represented. Ukrainian refugees, people looking for work permits, people just looking to renew driving records in other countries, and GV folks. My wife’s stomach was in knots before the lawyer got there. If you go to one of the bigger offices, use the potty before and bring water, luckily there was shade. We had a 2p appointment and waiting on the steps for almost an hour and a half before we were allowed to sit inside with our lawyer. We had some nice conversations with some very interesting people in the meantime, but it was painful. 90% of the people didn’t have appointments so we couldn’t imagine how long they might have to wait. Some were told to come back Friday after waiting god knows how long. There was panic as the window closed for people with no appointment. People started to move toward the doors, getting very nervous.
Now I prod my NIF representative to call me back to get the non-debt statement and try to figure out the quickest way to get birth and marriage certificates apostilled. I sent a marriage certificate to National Apostille and it’s disappeared. I suspect their CS will never call back and I full expect to re-do that and drive the 4 hours to the state capital to get it apostilled with the birth certificate.
Still nerve wracking, but theoretically, just need to submit those docs to move forward and start the clock.
I did feel better about the whole process meeting the person processing. She was nice, quiet, and efficient; but put a face on this step in the whole process to make it more palatable. SEF isn’t just some dissolved division of government, they are still working, and now hopefully a little quicker.
I am bummed we couldn’t stay longer this week, but flights are shitshow, my family bailed back home to get to work and I took two days in the Azores to decompress a bit. I’m just glad we all made the appointment, if we had missed it, I would have felt terrible.
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Just got an email from our lawyer that we got pre-approved!
Applicant and spouse applied: 24 Nov 21
Dependent parent applied: 25 Nov 21
Applicant and spouse pre-approval received: 20 Jul 22
Dependent parent still pending.
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Congrats!!!
My personal wild guess is that the next round of biometrics will be opened after all remaining 2021 applications have been pre-approved, as after Dec 31st there will be a sizeable gap in submitted applications due to the portal’s temporary closure during the whole of H1 2022. As they are now on late Nov 2021, and knowing that Dec 2021 must have been quite dense due to GV rule changes, it’ll probably take SEF 1 or 2 more months to process the rest of 2021.
That’s taking us to somewhere like mid-September for the next round of biometric invites, which by the way most likely be scheduling to Q4 2022 to Q1 2023, if not just H1 2023.
Again, this is all solely my own guesswork.
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