Wow. It seems logical too. It helps me tone down my expectations as my file was submitted on 27 June. I suppose we might have a long long wait ahead. Need to meditate. Imagine paying such a big amount to increase my own Blood Pressure
Well, my July biometrics was reviewed. Because of an illegible stamp in my passport from SEF, SEF is now requiring we provide boarding passes or letters from the airlines stating we flew on the day we said. They have all the flight manifests and passport scans, but the onus is on me.
Iām gutted as who knows how long itāll take to get this information from our airline or where our application will end up in the stack after this review.
Moral of the story, keep EVERY single boarding pass if paper and every single piece of evidence travelling. Iāll probably be so paranoid as to re-request the stuff going forward so if this does happen, Iāll have multiple copies.
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Sorry this happened to you.
^^ This ^^
@mmd this is terrible! they want you to prove that you flew in for the biometrics appointment on a certain day?
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Yes, we had provided the screenshot of the temporary boarding pass when we had our interview because the stamp on my passport was stamped lightly. You can read it, but barely. My familyāsā stamps were fine.
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Good reminder. When we flew in for biometrics, I asked in the airport lounge for printed boarding passes to be issued, even though we had them on our phones. Iāve kept them in my files since, just in case. Iād encourage everyone to do this - staff in the lounge, at an airline customer service desk or at the gate should be able to issue a paper boarding pass.
I wonder if SEF is this strict with all residency applicants or if this is just part of the āGoldenā treatment of applying for a politically disfavored visa.
Donāt be surprised if things get worse over time.
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If you read AFIP you see plenty of stories about applications being rejected due to this or that, people not writing their justification letter saying the right things or not showing sufficient income or savings or whatever such that it passes SEF muster even if people do have the money, and there is an admonishment in the FILES and guides saying that you really need to be very organized and have all your documentation just right or you will get kicked or delayed. And this is for VFS at the consulate, not even SEF.
The standards vary somewhat by person, not everyone is questioned on every document, but the requirements are there and enough people are bounced such that there is plenty of reason to believe that nits are picked with equal opportunity across the board - as they should be, I think.
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I had been in Portugal for nearly two months last year and the biometrics appointments became magically available and I was able to get one before my planned departure. My attorney told me I may need to show SEF I was in the country ālegallyā i.e., I had not overstayed my tourist visa. I can only presume thatās what SEF was concerned about?
My stamp looked terrible too. They need new stamps at Lisbon airport. 
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The stamps have been terrible at the border for two years! Absurd
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It is. The law states that you have to be in the country on a valid schengen visa at the time of application. If youāve overstayed, itās invalid. Therefore.
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Yes but the silly part is that SEF has electronic records of all this. They can surely look up your passport number and see exactly the date and time you were stamped in (despite the stamp being illegible).
But theyāll insist on the boarding passes becauseā¦
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Pre-approvals, anyone? Iām losing hopeā¦
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becauseā¦ as I said, the person working the desk to process your application probably does not work for the same division of SEF as the people who handle the borders and have access to all that information, and while they COULD make the systems more accessible they probably havenāt because that would require more work and resources and itās assuredly no oneās priority.
And sometimes I wonder if the data is even being captured at all. Iām sure you want to say āduh, obviouslyā but in dealing with old government systems, very little is obvious, and I think we continually underestimate how ancient many of these systems actually are.
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Also note two holidays recently. Possibly folks taking holiday days to extendā¦
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I fully hope that is the reasonš„² man, this is destroying my plans for the year
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Iāve filed a FOIA with US CBP for proof of travel that day in addition to a letter from the airline as a plan B. The funniest thing is they kept demanding the boarding pass which in of itself is not proof of any travel. I can login and generate 20 legitimate boarding passes for flights in the next 24 hours, but in no way does it confirm I used them and travelled.
They also donāt accept the automated confirmation system email from the airlines that send you the ticket with evidence it was fulfilled. It needs to be a document with the logo and signature. Seems like theyāre just making shit up at this point.
The most frustrating thing is when we asked the lawyers last year, they said it was all good and we didnāt need to get anything else. We could have tracked this stuff down to have in a file if needed.
Iāve just resigned myself to accept it is what it is at this point. If we donāt get approved, itās probably for the best with stuff like this happening. The bummer is that we have a sunk investment in PT thatād I rather use to buy a property.
Obvious suggestion, but could you generate a statement from a frequent flier / miles account with a logo on it showing the flight details?
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Legit question, in that case, no. Letter from airline on letterhead, signed. We typically donāt pay for flights because my wife is an airline employee. We have the record in the employee travel site. She can look it up in the system and see the flight was fulfilled, but they wonāt accept a copy of the ticket with the āFlownā endorsement on it. Weāre running it up internally to get sign off, but they still need her proof from Madrid to Lisbon. That one is odd because itās not a passport stamp and for all they know, she could have walked.
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oof, brutal. SEF is only approving 100 GVs or so per month at this point, so I guess us 2022 applicants will be hearing from them in 2030! I wonder how many pre approvals go out vs how many final approvalsā¦
I wish we had a similar article talking about December 2021 so we could compare the scale of the upcoming pain to the existing pain.