My husband and I are thinking about applying for the GV, and you’re the first person I have found that actually has a positive experience so far. We are hesitating because we don’t want to travel right now due to Covid. It looks like it took about 6 months from your initial application to the date you had to travel to Portugal for your biometrics. I’m wondering if the biometric appointment took longer than a few days for you to be in Portugal? Was the date set, and you had to travel to make the appointment, or were you able to schedule your appointment to do the biometrics around your visit? We are really torn about when to start this process, who to trust, and which investment/route to choose. Thanks again for sharing your experiences.
Best,
Sarah
Happy to hear you care considering the process. I’ll be clear to say it was not a good process per se, but mildly successful process. I still don’t know if in 5+ years if we will get passport, but I would be happy to get temporary residence permit as baseline and love if we manage to get passport. That’s all said to manage your and my expectations.
Biometrics in Portugal Processing Time: The actual biometric process for both my wife and myself took 1 day. However, our lawyers had to schedule our appointments in 2 different smaller cities. We left in early morning and drove 2 hours to do my appointment which took 2 hours. Then we drove to second city, and did my wife’s application, which took another two hours. It’s tiring day but we managed to get it all done in a day.
Visit or Appointment , what came first: You will have to make your appointment first, and then plan your visit as there is a queue and you don’t know when you will actually get appointment. So definitely ask your lawyer to get started early on getting appointment date. I’m planning my first renewal know, so I’m already asking my lawyer to book my appointment
Regarding who to trust and investment route, I can share my experiences privately if you want to DM me.
Not sure I agree with that statement as the bureaucracy, lack of quick turnarounds, and frankly lack of Portuguese can be a bit daunting. However, if you think you can do it on your own, all power to you as I found it a bit challenging myself. I think primary challenge for me was having to do much of this remotely, and if you are planning to sink 350,000K EURO into an investment, seems like 5-6K is sort of marginal cost to have someone in country to help manage the process. Just my two cents.
I guess as you said depends on circumstance. Think many of us are work outside Portugal full time and do not have ability to be in country to manage many of these matters. I also am sure when you first got to Portugal for first time, there was a learning curve which again requires time and effort, so having someone to take that onus off us as investors in that regard for 1-2% of total investment could be viewed as acceptable trade-off for many of us.
Does anybody know if making appointment With SEF for the renewal of the golden visa is possible now or the appointment for renewal cannot be made due to COVID-19. @Zayd_Khoury: I think you mentioned that you are making appointment for the renewal. Did you make it?
@Zach1 I have not tried to make an appointment as my renewal is not until early next year. I’ll likely and see how things play out for next few months, and then consider reaching out to SEF through my legal firm to make appointment.
There is a new category of permanent residence for investment purposes which waives the physical presence requirements. Does anybody know if I the 14/2 requirements are still needed and whether or not I will need to maintain my investment? Also, after obtaining PR, will I be eligible to apply for citizenship at any time? Will there be separate physical stay requirements?
No… into July 2020… over 1 year since we went to do biometrics. Apparently their home affairs is very slow so it has been incredibly frustrating with every single month being told its coming it’s coming… but still nothing…
@Leigh_Mac, @andyB I def have been there. Took me from May 27 2019 biometrics done and submitted to June 3rd, 2020 to get my cards (sent to lawyer but longer for me to get them).
I can only say it does happen but on a much slower timeline than we were all promised and would expect. Stay strong and look forward to having you join fold of Portuguese temporary residence holders.
