I guess eventually it may deter some people. Eventually. I guess it will serve to ensure the people that make it through are more… economically desirable, for lack of a better term.
I think it will take 10 years, if not longer, for us to get the passports. every step is sooo bureaucratic and unresponsive. bottlenecks follow bottlenecks. GV renewal and new applicant appointments will soon add up. We are all screwed.
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You’d think the obvious answer to the backlog would be to drop any requirements for renewals of biometrics until the pandemic is over or auto extend Visas, etc. by 2 years.
Much like how in California they just said “Everyone’s Drivers License is Valid 1 more year, don’t come into the DMV Office”
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Or get the biometric done here in the Portuguese embassy.
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Honestly, this is the best solution and the simplest. If they manage the biometric from their Embassies at various countries, and after scrutiny of documents issue the ARI Card with the additional requirement of another biometric once the applicant uses his ARI card to enter into Portugal for the first time as a Golden Visa Resident, it would solve a lot of problems. Frankly, after pumping approx 600,000 EUR into the country, I do feel I deserve a little more consideration.
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Agree, I would urge everyone here to talk to your lawyer about the possibility of doing biometrics in Portuguese embassies. And ask them to bring it up in any forum that exists between the legal community and SEF. So they can think about making changes to this inefficient process or find solutions.
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Perhaps every law firm should go on strike until this situation is resolved.
It seems to be normal for workers in Europe, but not very common approach in North America.
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seems like a good way for them to not get paid. not thinking that’s going to happen.
our lawyers are not on our side at all. they just want to hide the bad news and attract new GV clients. nobody in Portugal will go on strike to help us. the real estate agents want to hide the bad news too.
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We have 10 active clients- applicants (including myself, which finally processed) on file. The recent appointment was done last September.
8 applicants from our side invested from September to February and no one got the appointment. Mine was rescheduled from last October to August.
From my own experience this summer i can conclude that these applications are low priority for Portugal. We use local lawyers and they are good enough.
During the whole workday in August only 5 applications were processed - these guys from SEF don’t overwork and don’t care about the investors - appointments issue is not about overload, it looks a deliberate policy to cut the quantity of GV- holders, probably because of the USA political pressure on EU.
And that’s the reason why i stopped recommending Portugal Golden visa to my clients.
Needless to say that complaints to the web site never received a response.
Moreover, Portuguese consulate in my country refused to issue any d-visas to my family even when they had biometrics appointments. They just stopped to answer at some point. So overall it’s more an African experience.
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I’d love to do that but I doubt it will help at all. It is not a priority for the government and I doubt it will ever be. Given the global refugee crisis, nobody is sympathetic to the foreigners these days. So if the government allocated a decent budget to SEF to resolve this matter they could even be blamed by voters for “wasting” Portuguese tax payers’ money.
And by the way, this is not the only long and cumbersome process in Portugal. Even citizens sometimes complain about long waiting times for relatively simple processes.
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Right. The difference is that in this situation the government designed and offered a program to attract foreigners to the country. It was even renewed as recently as this year. To then treat the foreigners like dirt does not make good sense.
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SEF eased their backlog by changing the valid period of a 1 year temporary residence permit to 2 years, and the valid period of 2 year permits to 3 years. More importantly, residence permit renewals are now online with no appointment necessary.
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Do note that the online residence permit renewals are only for certain categories. Residence permit by investment activity is not one of them.
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I am considering moving forward with the Portuguese GV but this thread makes it sound like it’s a nightmare and impossible to successfully go through. Are people here still struggling with it or is the situation looking better?
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It seems as though the process has changed where it is no longer a game of everyone preliminarily approved trying to get an online appointment, but the timelines do not seem to have improved, at least to me:
https://community.nomadgate.com/t/sef-appointment-sharing-status
so now you’re assigned a date automatically but it still takes a long time?
and probably getting longer what with the ukrainian situation.
Maybe the fast track now is to get the Ukrainian Citizenship by investment, then using the Ukrainian Passport to get the Resident Card in Portugal. It seems to be a faster way to go 
You need to have resided in Ukraine on or before 24 Feb 2022 to be eligible for protection in the European Union. After that date, acquiring Ukrainian citizenship/residence card per se, doesn’t fast track anything.
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