While I understand the frustration of being stuck in line with SEF, which seemingly isn’t making much progress at clearing their large backlog, I think this needs correcting:
So far 729 ARI residence permits have been granted this year (January–July). Source. This is more or less on par with the period 2016-2020, and a big jump from 2021.
That being said, ending up with a backlog as massive as the current one is of course unacceptable. And while there are approvals coming through these are initially for the investors who had failed to get an appointment with the old self-serve system of booking biometrics appointments and had already waited a long time (sometimes several years).
For the ones who applied in the last year or so there has been no tangible progress (no biometric appointments) while the backlog is being cleared—although there have been some recent data points showing a current 11 month wait. Still, I think others have waited longer.
It would have been interesting to get an update from SEF on the status of the backlog. I know a number was shared when they changed the booking system, but I can’t find it at the moment.