There is a lot of talk about visa-free travel in this thread so I thought I might contribute some of my own experience. I have already completed biometrics but still waiting for final approval and residence card, and I hold a passport that would normally require a visa to enter the EU. I have exited Schengen twice at Lisbon airport, once on a residence permit from another EU country where I was working, and once on the biometrics receipt. Both times I asked the border control agent whether I would be allowed to come back to Portugal with the biometrics receipt, and both times I had unequivocal positive answers (once the agent had to ask her colleague).
And today I came back to Lisbon and cleared passport control with exactly the biometrics receipt. The border agent was initially confused and had to confer with his colleague, but the whole thing was done in a just a few minutes, no questions asked. I also didnât have any problems checking in to my flight with biometrics receipt. Check-in agent took the piece of paper and asked no questions. It was with Qatar airways.
So, obviously this is a one-off experience, but it seems to be a consensus at least at Lisbon airport that the biometrics receipt is a valid travel document in lieu of a visa or residence card.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
May I ask one question? Did you fly from Asia to Lisbon(with a transit in Doha - Qatar) by Qatar Airline today? or did your flight consist of one flight (without any transit) from Doha Qatar to Lisbon?
It was from Africa, I was away on holiday. 
A bit of a risky move, but I thought the opinions I got from both my lawyer and the border agents were unanimous, so the only potential obstacle would be QR not issuing me a boarding pass. At the end, everything was surprisingly smooth.
Thanks for your sharing. It is very helpful information⊠
Just another question - do you normally live in Portugal ? Did you apply for the ARI before 31 Dec 2021? Did your lawyer indicate either of those things matter ?
- Short answer yes. Long answer I usually have a residence permit tied to my job in another EU country, but Iâm now between two jobs so living in Portugal in the interim.
- Yes.
- Lawyer didnât say either way.
We GVs are so back of the queueâŠ
Also in the queue, with slower service, are 50,000 Golden Visa investors and their family members, who are entitled to a residence permit. The Government chose to leave this group until the end, considering the processes less complex.
And due to wrap-up soon (because theyâre done?!??): that big âmission structure, led by former AIMA president LuĂs Goes Pinheiro⊠created by the Government with the aim of reducing all these processes to zero by the summer of this year.â [or perhaps now just by 30%?]
Hundreds of thousands of applicants referred to in this article, but zero GVs. So no surprise if your application continues to be ignoredâŠ
Not really a surprise coming from populists left and right. But it was surprisingly nasty coming from the employee of a company in the rentseeking business trying to sell its services 
Consider whether the following scenario constitutes immigration fraud: Suppose I owned a tiny shop in Martim Moniz back in 2023 (with no need for any employee other than myself), and my second cousin in Bangladesh wanted to move to Portugal through MI. So we came to an agreement that his mother would pay my mother the equivalent of EUR1500 per month back in Bangladesh, and I would âhireâ him for EUR1000 in Portugal: (1) with a signed employment contract, (2) real money is paid to cousin and social security, and (3) cousin never does any actual work in my shop.
So why isnât below tax fraud? Consideration is paid (100k), company would not have agreed to hire me / put me on the Board otherwise, and Portugal loses tax revenue.
Itâs not immigration or tax fraud if they follow the laws as they are written.
But it is an example of how pointless these policies can be, and how their only real accomplishment is to enrich rent-seekers while being sold to the public as something entirely different.
Sadly, the enrichment of rent-seekers tends to be the result of most populist and protectionist policies in general. And in many cases, this is exactly the true goal of such policies from the moment they are conceived.
Has anybody tried using the âPortal da Queixaâ (seems a PT version of Trustpilot) described in this article to complain to AIMA? If yes did you have any success from it?
https://www.portugalresident.com/complaints-against-aima-surge-by-37/
Complaints against AIMA surge by 37%
According to data from Portugalâs complaints portal, Portal da Queixa, the platform received 593 complaints about the agency between January and April â a significant rise compared to 432 complaints in the last four months of 2024. And the problems appear far from over: as of May 12, another 100 complaints had already been submitted.
Reading through various âresolvedâ AIMA complaints, some of them would be better described as âabandoned,â not resolved. Others do report back later that they got what they needed⊠but perhaps by other means (email, phone, lawyer) or just coincidence. I donât get the sense that AIMA reads these complaints and actions them - heck AIMA ignores 99% of the emails sent directly to them, so why would they read these Portal da Queixa posts?
Unlike the official âyellow bookâ for complaints about PT public entities, peopleâs complaints on Portal da Queixa are laid out in shocking detail - their full names, kidsâ names, sometimes NIFs, MI application numbers, etc. I realise weâre all desperate for any help from AIMA, but omg donât post that personal info on a public website.
âŠso Iâm thinking Portal da Queixa is just another outlet to whinge about AIMA, but wonât actually get AIMA to do anything?
At least on Portal da Queixa, it ends up in the newsâŠ
PdQ is something sort of like the BBB in the us, or yelp. It only has power because itâs a popular complaint board and businesses donât like showing up there. I wouldnât expect much from AIMA in response to a post there
So I am reading through this feed and Iâm fairly new to this process. Just starting off. Iâm reading all these comments thinking OMG what have I gotten my family into.
Iâm also thinking there has to be a decent success rate with Golden Visa leading to citizenship. If there is not then how are there so many people doing this program? Are there any success stories out there or is it all doom and gloom.
Before COVID, before Manifestação, before the huge backlog, things were decent â this is the reason too many decided to apply to Portugal, the system became overloaded, and the government decided to make things more difficult.
The PT GV used to be a functional programme years ago - hence the attraction. People got their residency cards in a reasonable amount of time (like a year), although now they are having trouble renewing them, or theyâve done 5 years and are now waiting 2+ years in the citizenship application backlog.
Then Covid came along (every service providerâs excuse). And SEF mutated into AIMA. SEF used to publish monthly GV approval stats (remember those, guys?). But AIMAâs never been able to produce anything that detailed since, so I believe the Sept. 2023 SEF GV stats are the latest available. I still see GV promoters quoting those (released in) âOctober 2023â stats today - I do hope people ask them why the best PT GV stats they have are a year and half old⊠that tells you something!
But where the approval backlog exploded was when the previous Socialist government allowed anybody with a tourist visa to stay, work for a year, and then apply for residency (Manifestação de Interesse). Now the backlog is in the hundreds of thousands, with us 50,000 or so GV applicants seemingly at the back of the queue. So thereâs GV applicants waiting 3+ years here for any sign of life from AIMA.
Some of us sued to get AIMAâs attention, which worked in the early days. Imagine having to sue a government agency just to process your damn paperwork in less than a year (or 2, 3âŠ)! Then the courts got inundated with thousands of AIMA lawsuits and that route basically doesnât function anymore.
Feeling a bit bad for us hundreds of thousands (MI, CPLP, GV, etc.) waiting for AIMA, the previous government decided to include application waiting time in our years to citizenship (providing that we were eventually approved). However the current government never liked that notion, so it is applied totally randomly by AIMA.
Now the current government is making noises about increasing the years required for PT citizenship from 5 - unclear if that would be to 7, 10, or what. Still early days on this one, but nonetheless not what we signed up for.
âŠso lots of broken promises, total randomness and senselessness, and of course waiting. GV promoters tend to omit those ugly bits in their sales pitch (as if it was still 5 years ago), or say AIMAâs trying to improve (see: lots of broken promises).
If you have all the patience in the world, donât mind your substantial investment of money+time+hopes+dreams getting ignored, and perhaps not getting what you signed up for, welcome to the Portugal Golden Visa 
There are some people who have had success with citizenship. However, there arenât that many, because before 2021, there simply werenât that many GV applicants in the first place. Volume of applicants picked up in 2020-2021 and has increased steadily since. Thus, most of the people in the GV process havenât been in it long enough to make it to citizenship application, much less receiving a passport.
2020-21 is when American âinfluencersâ started gushing about Portugal. Looking at it now with the benefit of hindsight, thatâs the beginning of the end of the GV program.
Portugal should have just ended the program, or made it significantly more selective to lower demand. Instead, they just string you along, hoping folks would take the hint from the horrible treatment . This is the case not only for GV, but all their immigration programs.
If CPLP becomes the new MI and the number of foreigners living in Portugal continues to increase year after year, I would not be surprised if Chega becomes the main opposition party or even the leading party in 5 years. Then Iâll definitely take the hint and go back where I came from.
I kind of agree, but unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20. At the time, I am sure it was seen as a good thing, at least at first, to see more people apply. Problems at SEF/AIMA were slow to bubble up to anyoneâs attention, as can be expected - what bureaucrat is going to proactively and voluntarily admit to problems? And governments take a long time to get around to making changes even when a problem is seen - this is not at all unique to Portugal either. By the time it got to anyoneâs real attention, the damage had already been done. Alas.
As spotted first in the renewals thread.
- Good news: AIMAâs figured out theyâre nowhere near âdoneâ with their backlog, despite time running out on their 1-year mission structure next month
- Bad news: GVs still at the back of the queue, behind a couple hundred thousand CPLP processes now
[note: not yet formalised!]
Government decides to maintain AIMA mission structure until December 31 to speed up the regularization of immigrants, despite reducing the team involved by 50%.In the first stage, the mission structure prioritized the resolution of the 440 [thousand] pending requests for residence permits in Portugal linked to the now-defunct expression of interest. At this time, priority is being given to the 220,000 citizens of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), whose residence permits were issued on A4 sheets of paper, without the security rules required by the European Union, and are being exchanged for plastic cards, valid for two years.
ââŠuntil 31st DecemberâŠâ of what year ? It is very smart that they left it blank for people to figure out. Maybe 31st December 2030âŠ
. With the influx keeps adding every year and Aima itself cannot even handle the renewals, i think 2030 is a bit optimisticâŠ