Apparently we donāt live in the same world. 
Why did you think that was a different problem? Did you watch till the end?
The only difference between now and back then was that they were waiting for more than one year whilst IN the country and we are outside the country. Any other difference?
We paid 5.000 to Mercan for their legal service fees, up front and first thing in the process. Not sure about other programs though.
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I canāt speak about Mercan personally because I am not familiar, but not all legal services are like that. Some donāt require full payment upfront.
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My lawyer ask for 50% advance and 50% after receiving card .Start the process in 15 Dec 2020 still waiting for card
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technically a bit different cause. but you are right. not fundamentally different. same slow and inefficient government.
lawyers are not in the same boat as we are in
- we paid 380k euro. that is a big check. the lawyers can get side payment or business opportunities from real estate agents or fund managers. not sure about this but the possibility is open
- mercan case: lawyers are primarily paid for by the business. goes back to my point 1 above
- if you get your cards after 3 months or 3 years, it will not matter that much to the lawyers. they know they will be eventually paid. it will make a huge differences to us.
and why we only talk about lawyers? all those who benefit from our investment (lawyers, agents, business, funds, etc.) do NOT care if we wait for another year to get our cards or get the cards renewed. they still keep getting new investors who know nothing about the delay ahead. that is the problem.
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Of course, lawyers and promoters are not in the same situation. You are an investor. They are a service provider. Understandably you are anxious about your application and delays. When many people here applied in mid-2020 much of this information was not well known or publicized. At least since late 2020 the extended delays to obtain biometrics and cards was well known. If you went ahead and applied anyway, then its hard to complain now about the process and the delays. You can find posts on this forum as early as November 2020. Now, if you only found this forum after you applied, and your lawyer told you incorrect information, that is on your lawyer. My entire point was just to ensure that your lawyerās interests are more aligned with yours by delaying payments. There was a time when lawyers did have the ability to make more of an impact on timing and many lawyers did not do so. The lawyers that did go above and beyond should be rewarded by getting all of the GV business. The lawyers that work harder and can expedite appointments would probably be more willing to have contingent payments. That logic is something of a moot point now because SEF is essentially shut down. The lawyers that are pounding the table and complaining to SEF. I think it will have some impact over time, but it is probably more symbolic than anything else.
Donāt get me wrong. I am not happy about the process and timeline. It I knew then what I know now, I would probably explore Turkey visa instead.
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OMG, you must be a Portuguese lawyer. You are so defensive of those guys.
Are you saying that after we spend so much money in terms of investment and fees. it is still OUR RESPONSIBLITY to get the information of delays and we even LOSE the Rights to complain? isnāt the job of the lawyers/agents to tell the new investors the truth? but they are not. just google it. lawyers and agents say nothing about the huge delay on their website.
I guess most new investors do not know our forum at all. those from Turkey and China may not even speak much English. we only know the existence of delay when our money is locked in.
I just realized that when the process is delayed, we will have to keep our investment in Portugal for a longer time. guess who benefits from the delays? i was wrong when I said that fund/agent did not care. their interests were actually opposite to ours. I am not accusing these guys being unethical. I just want to emphasize that the system is against us.
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Hey mate, trust me that Turks who invest in GV are almost always proficient in English; especially the ones younger than 50 years of age; my sample size is decent 
In todayās world English proficiency among the educated wealthy class across geographies is pretty commonā¦
Yet you are right in one aspect!! I came to know about this forum only last year when I was pissed of about not getting a renewal appointment for monthsā¦ I (my lawyers) still could not get one.
By that time, it was my dear āfriendā google 
which directed me to one of the discussion topicsā¦
For general knowledge about Turkey, if you check how the US votes for Democrats / Republicans it is pretty similar in Turkey, Metropolitan areas along with Coastal parts vote for progressives, interior rural areas vote for conservativesā¦ For US, south & south east coast (Texas to South Carolina) is exception for Turkey it is the Black sea coast.
Therefore folks from major cities or western, mediterranean regions along with the younger generation are pretty well integrated with the global worldā¦
All the Best
Mr. E
I think you are reading too much into what is possible and more importantly, whether or not something is worth pursuing. If this is your first immigration attempt, you might want to stock up on patience as much as possible. Trust me, U.S. INS is (or at least - āwasā) nothing particularly expeditious or organised. They too lost my paperwork, caused naturalisation delays, set me back almost a year in my job search, and were completely unapologetic. And that was (this time, for sure āwasā) in the country that was considerably more efficient than Portugal. You just have to roll with the punches, accept them on their terms rather than trying to rattle cages at the governmental levels and create potential animosity towards expats.
We are currently in a completely unprecedented time in the modern history. First it was the pandemic, now it is the bloody war. Most governments and their programmes have been completely disrupted either physically and/or financially. The system worked before, and it would work again, but it needs time to re-group which is never easy or expedient.
After all, one of the key charms of Portugal is the slow pace of life and their laissez faire attitude; that is, if you really want to move there.
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Just to add to your points, yes, this delay is totally against the applicants and favoring other sides. Applicants need to keep the investment for longer period than it was promised and thereby itās costing the applicants more than what apparently planned from the informed information.
Fund houses are getting more time to play with the GV applicantsā funds.
If invested in real estates, you need to hold that for longer period too.
Worst thing, if your kids have applied and with a dream to get PR/ Citizenship after 5 years of holding the GV, they might not even be eligible. Say, your kid is in college and a dependent while you apply, then before s/he completes her/his GVās final renewal s/he becomes independent, then s/he cannot even get her/his GV to renewed. I might be having wrong understanding, if so, anyone may let me know so and explain.
So, effectively, even your plan to get PR/ Citizenship for your whole family might not be possible. AND then your kid needs to apply on her own again for the GV againā¦
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Nah, just cynical and realistic. Yes it sucks. Yell all you want. Whatās it going to change?
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We could start by collecting data and to make it very clear how long this process is taking. Iām happy to start the process, we could create a simple survey/form that aggregates all the responses into a spreadsheet from which we can summarize average/median time between various steps. This can then be shared with whoever we like to view the data.
What are the steps that weād like to collect information on? Iām thinking the following dates:
- Application submission
- Application pre-approval
- Biometrics appointment was scheduled (not the appointment date)
- Biometrics appointment (and location of appointment)
- Is there a notice of approval after biometrics appointment?
- Received residence card(s)
Other information:
- Email address (or other unique identifier). Used so that people can re-submit the form when they have updates to their case and I can remove their old entries.
- What else? Is there any data we want to be able to segment by?
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I think generally this information is already here in the threads but admittedly would take a lot of time to piece it together.
Here are some other data points that may be useful.
Who actually scheduled biometrics (yourself or lawyers). ?
Was your biometrics obtained at will or chronological. ?
Were you requested to submit additional documents after biometric appointment?
You might want to collect same data for family members (reunification)
To keep generally anonymous, maybe for people that dont want to provide their email they can use a 12 digit alpha-numeric instead.
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Love this idea - to enable even reporters that may want to write about it, or lawyers that are interested in lobbying the SEF. Happy to help create the formā¦
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Iām trying to strike the right balance between gathering useful information vs asking too many questions, esp ones that are not absolutely relevant to timeline.
Hereās an proposed draft of the survey form:
And results:
Any glaring oversights before I start sharing it?
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Thanks for creating the template. Looks great.
Can you add a column which asks if Schengen visa is needed for biometrics appointment ( Yes or No).
Also another column for deficiencies noted during biometric appointment
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thank you loheiman and everybody
the bottleneck is how to disseminate the information to potential investors who usually know nothing about the delay. the bottleneck is not high quality info. we do not need to have precise data. some verbal warning, citation of news articles/this website/old youtube video is sufficient. and we need to recruit more people to join our endeavor to disseminate the information. I think some hashtag in twitter, high-impact video in youtube, front-page article in google search are really crucial. we need to get organized a bit. this is a long journey. we need an association that stands for our interests. we need people who are willing to do some organization and we need people who are willing to disseminate our message.
i like the idea of having a unique identifier (nickname) for updating. but probably not email or username that may make some people feel nervous.
too many questions may deter people to take the survey. how about just the date of submission, and a multiple choice question of which stage you are currently in (pre-approved, biometric appointment, card, renewal, PR, citizenship). also add an open question for people to type their individual concerns.
I think you raise a good point. To put pressure on SEF, we probably only need to collect application date, residency card received date and perhaps biometrics date. The start to end timeline is what matters most. However for those in the process that want to know what to expect and how long each step of the process takes, gathering dates of each discrete steps does that. Perhaps I can organize or emphasize the dates that we really care about and communicate the other ones are purely optional.