Is it Lawsuit time? (Processing times)

Residencies & citizenships Portugal Golden Visa đŸ‡”đŸ‡č
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I sat in on a Portugalist webinar yesterday, “How to Get an AIMA Appointment & Other Moving to Portugal Questions.”

One of the two panelists was a lawyer (Ines Silva). She was very upfront about how f’d the AIMA situation is
 which was refreshing because usually anything “Portugal” + “webinar” is a sunny sales pitch.

Some of Ines’ points for us GV’ers. Of course these are her experiences
 ymmv:

  • The only way she’s getting appointments for her clients (new and renewal) is via lawsuits
    – Given that even expired cards have been extended to end-June 2025 anyway, Renewal court cases need a ‘more urgent’ reason to win. If you don’t have an urgent reason to renew, it’s better not to sue
  • AIMA’s now taking 8-10 weeks to schedule appointments after court notifications (or actual court orders) - this used to be a week
  • AIMA wasn’t replying to the Court earlier. Now the law firm that AIMA hired to defend them at 50€/case typically replies with an appointment date and “Don’t rule negatively against us, we’ve already offered an appointment.”
    – To me this is dangerous: If you don’t have an actual Court ruling demanding AIMA do something by a deadline (and perhaps with financial penalties), they can continue to take their sweet time

You only have to watch the first ~15 minutes to hear most of the GV-related discussion. They then went on to D2, D7, etc. for the remainder:

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