At this point, any attempt to clear out the backlog is a welcome move. Hate to wait till late 2025-Mid 2026 for a GV filing in 2022. We have barely seen 2-3 initial approvals come thru in this forum over the past 3plus months and we still have not crossed over into 2022 filings. Are there any other forums where people have seen pre-approval of any 2022 filings
Lets wait and see how this will pan out
Personally, I believe that the current attempt will slow down and intensify the backlogs. The automatic renewal is always faster than making approval by humans. Only way to make it faster than automatic renewal is to issue card with its validity of 5 years.
I agree the 5 year card will eliminate the hassle of producing the same documents over and over again.
I am so focussed on the initial pre-approval, I have not had the curiosity to check what happens on the renewals. I take it, that is quite painful as well? Isn’t the fee we pay sufficient enough to pay for enough employees to process the cards? I do not quite understand the delayed processing or the lack of processing.
From my selfish view point, I was looking at the initial pre-approval to be sped thru without realizing these same hurdles exist thru every renewal as well. Alas!
If they hired enough people to run the program correctly, they would have to spend all of the ARI fees…
Not sure how much work is involved in vetting the applicants and approving them, but given that an average family has 2 applicants paying a total close to 11000 Euros, would that not be sufficient amount to pay for a single employee even if the employe has to work for a full month only on that applicant’s family and leave additional money left over? It should be even more quicker for the renewal approvals since they will have to look only at the Delta of data from the initial application
Perhaps I am looking at this in a simplistic fashion without really understanding the amount of the work involved in approving the applications.
I have a brilliant idea: let them hire us…in 2 weeks the problem was solved.
It really shouldn’t be that much work. I mean the requirement are relatively simple: identity documents, criminal background check, and some declarations from your bank that you invested in things that qualify. I can see on the ARI portal that the entire list of documents that was given to SEF for my biometrics appointment was like 6 PDFs. So… I don’t see how it takes 2 years to look at that and decide, yup looks exactly like the last 1500 of these, approved…
IAS, at least I received that message from IAS.
I’ve been busy, but to follow up, I did biometrics in Portimao on February 23rd. Only issue we have now is that our applications have all been split up, so we may have 4 trips for 4 people in the family. Waiting on bio for my youngest daughter who was also pre-approved, wife and other daughter are on appeal for expired documents (after 2 years, duh).
So question for people on this stage. Is there a short cut to getting a Tourist Schengen visa in the meantime?
My current one just expired and the Portuguese Embassy in my City seems to be backed up until AUGUST! And it’s not just Portugal. Every Schengen Embassy is backed up like hell for a short visit visa. I don’t have any plans coming up, I just like to keep one given the wait times.
I don’t know which city you’re in, but this trend is WW. The third party vendors don’t have enough staff. I would keep trying as TLS/BLS or whichever third party is operating the visa services do drop new appointments at set times, including cancellations. It’s a matter of luck getting one when you need it.
Has anyone heard of any pre-approval lately?
The last entry we have in the database is from January 24th… Almost 2 months with no pre-approvals!
To my knowledge, AIMA is first working on a power point presentation to be shown to the new government mentioning revised realistic timeline for backlog clearance. AIMA believes recently updated 2025 timeline is too strict a deadline to be achieved.
Also, basis communication from my lawyer- one, only one primary applicant among her clients who applied in June-2022 is pre-approved.
How certain is this? June 22 Pre approvals starting would be a big thing.
perhaps a family reunification case?
Pretty sure it was primary applicant. But just one instance among all of my lawyer’s clients applying 2022 onwards
Could this pre-approval from lawsuit?
If not private, who is your lawyer?
Nope. But it came in February. Nothing since then…so basically pre-approvals are halted.