Just a reminder to be on top of your passport expiration! Mine is good for another 9 months but I just read an article that Portugal and other Schengen countries require a passport to be valid for 6 months AFTER your entry date. I canāt imagine waiting all this time for a biometrics appointment and then getting refused entry at the border and subsequently MISSING my appointmentā¦
Schengen countries in Europe
Many European countries ā 26 in all ā are signers of the Schengen Agreement. As a result, they follow the 3+3 Rule, which says your passport must be valid for three months beyond your three-month entry visa or for a total of six months, regardless of how long your initial stay is. While some Schengen countries only require passports to be valid for three months beyond your intended stay, others assume you may stay the full 90 days of your visa validity ā thus the six-month time period.
The signers of the Schengen Agreement are: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Yes, youāre absolutely right.
Also some countries, UK included, reissue passports before they expire.
This means they can be valid for longer than 10 years BUT the schengen zone only recognise passports for 10 years (since the issue date)
This catch can ruin a whole trip see belowā¦ The passport should have been issued within the last 10 years
Why are the names of these countries a secret? And did your friends want to physically live there? That would be fairly easy in Portugal, too, but that isnāt what the GV is about.
They are not Schengen zone countries, come to Russia and take residence permit even faster
Now you can easily refrase āyou get, what you pay forā to āyou get, what you wait forā
I had everything ready to submit my application in Feb 2022 but I had to wait until June 2022 for the system to re-allow new applications to be submitted.
You can check the crowdsourced database in this forum
If you applied late in December (28th or so), yes, thatās normal. They are still working through the late December flood, and gradually issuing pre-approvals.
Pre-approved!!! Family of 4 (kids were 5 and 7 when we applied). We submitted our application on DECEMBER 27, 2021 and just got notified of approval from our attorneys today, SEPTEMBER 20, 2023ā¦. About 21 months total. We were told that all 4 of us have been pre-approved.
We have been in Europe since August 1st (our house was done being built and we needed to come) and had planned on going home Oct. 24. We will probably change flights and hope to stay and get a biometric appointment soon-ish instead of flying all the way back to CA then back to Portugal potentially weeks later.
Luckily we re-did appostille of kidās birth certificates (good for a year) and our marriage certificate (good for 6 months) in July. We also paid the company that did our FBI background check to archive our prints so they can access them forever and re-run our prints without us having to physically re-do the prints each time. Our Portuguese lawyer told us about this option and it was, indeed, possible. We met with our lawyers in August with our passports and social security cards so they could be certified in Portugal. As I understand, everything else is on our lawyers now. They need to translate docs and get items showing no taxes owed etc.
Our lawyers had told us it wasnāt necessary to do any of these things back in July but we were hoping for a miracle (pre-approval) while we were here. Canāt believe it happened and canāt believe we bought dirt and built an entire house BEFORE we got our pre-approval!
Hoping for a speedy biometric appointment because I only packed homeschool supplies through October. My kids will be thrilled if weāre waiting for months with nothing to do besides eat pastel de nata and swim in the ocean.
Some sort of magical fā ā ā ery is up, i signed up on this forum yesterday and mentioned that we have been waiting since dec 26th 2021, this morning i woke up and we got email from our attorney saying we are pre approved (we are a Family of 4, wife, husband, 6 year old kid and mother in law). 3 of us were approved, mother in law, they are asking for proof that we support her, so sending those docs soon.
We are born in india and now living in canada on work permit, is there anything we can do between now and biometrics (attorney said, it will be 3-6 months) to make our life easier?
Make sure you have valid documents, for me in the US I made sure I had my FBI background check apostilled ahead of time. Keep them renewed on a rolling basis - a little expensive maybe, but worth it
I would be interested to know which company you used to archive the fingerprints. We used Livescan but I just logged back in and they didnāt save any info about our prints so we would presumably need to redo them for whole family which would be annoying!
I think thereās a chance your biometrics are much faster than that - you may be invited to make an appointment within weeks, for a window in the following few months. They seem to have caught up with the backlog of biometrics.
Yeah biometrics are every 3 months these days, like clockwork. Check the biometrics thread for when they last opened, assume they will open a week or two before the previous batch is done
see belowā¦
Family of 4 (kids were 5 and 7 when we applied). We submitted our application on DECEMBER 27, 2021 and just got notified of approval from our attorneys today, SEPTEMBER 20, 2023ā¦. About 21 months total. 
We were told that all 4 of us have been pre-approved.
