Awaiting Final Approval (Stage 4)

GV does not fall under article 82 so I doubt its applicable.

Dear Garbonzo, could you please elaborate a little bit on your thought? Why do you think GV residence permit doesn’t fall into this law act?
As far as I understand it’s general terms for all temporary or permanent residence permits. Do you know any other act that specifically regulates GV permit?

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Its possible I am wrong. I am relaying what my lawyer said to me, but they have been known to provide inaccurate information on many occasions. Its possibly they didnt want to deal with any extra work.

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Spouse residency card received!! 11 months from bio in Coimbra to card. Coimbra is slow. Through our experience we have learned a lot. It seems each time we squeaked the wheel, or our attorney did, something moved the needed. It was too coincidental that when I got impatient and started to squalk at the attorney, and she squalked at SEF, something happened. Your mileage may vary, and while the old addage “be patient”, “it’s a different culture” etc. etc. is true to some degree, I do believe that persistancy and some level of accountability and pressure needs to be applied to keep the wheels turning. I also believe through this, and following many forums on the topic that GV applications are not a priority for SEF once your money is in country. If a D7 applicant can have a visa in 90 days and a GV application takes an extra year in SEF’s hands, something is awry. Cheers to everyone in the system and waiting, it won’t last forever.

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We purchased our property in September 2020, had our application approved 14 December 2020, biometrics 14 & 15 March 2022 in Porto, and still waiting. We moved to Porto in late August so our son could start school thinking that we would certainly receive our residency visas before our tourist visas run out
 wrong. Our attorney thinks it will be soon, but has told us the same thing since July. If anyone has any advice for speeding this up in Porto please let me know. We are here and I am willing to run around town to finish this process. I feel like we should apply for a renewal as soon as the first year visa arrives.

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Wow its surprising . Its mystery how SEF work we got our card from Coimbra within 5 months

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We did Biometrics in Azores in late November of 2021 (Thanksgiving week) and just got our visas approved. So about 12 months. Our attorney was delinquent in submitting our documents, so they expired and had to be resubmitted in early March of 2022. I don’t know how much delay that caused. 12 months doesn’t seem out of the ordinary for Azores SEF.

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Could you please clarify what does “they expired” mean? Were the documents valid on biometry/submission date? How did you know that the documents should be refreshed and resubmitted?

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We had our Bio-metric appointment in Lisbon, August 2022. I know it will still be some months until final approval, notice to pay, and eventual receipt of residency cards.

My question is how can I keep tabs on the progress of these “last steps”? The lawyers keep saying “We have no further updates regarding your file”

Is there specific proof I can demand from my lawyers each month to ensure that SEF has not asked for any additional documents/clarification? a screenshot of the online system with the status of our application?

Much appreciated.

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Your police certificate is good for 90 days. Marriage certificate is good for 180 days. Our police certificates were about 60 days old when we went because it took so long for apostille, so they only had 30 days to get it translated and submitted which was plenty of time. But our attorney never submitted any of it and emailed us about three months later saying we hadn’t submitted any documents when in fact we had brought them with us to the biometrics appointment and the lawyer they sent took them back to Porto to be translated. They were still able to submit our marriage certificate but we had to get our police certificates again and get them apostilled again. I was quite miffed at their mishandling.

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Your lawyer can request SEF to provide you with your login for the SEF portal. SEF will then send this to you and you can see the correspondence between them and your lawyer as well as copies of all documents submitted to SEF and received from them.

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Here is my timeline as a point of reference :
Dec 2020 application submitted
April 21 Application accepted - paid fee
Jan 22 Biometric in Lisbon
Aug 22 request for updated background check
Dec 12 Application Approved
Dec 13 paid GV fee

Now waiting for the card!
Good luck!

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Similar timeline for us in Azores. We initially applied November 2020, biometrics in Azores November 2021, just got request to pay December 2022.

So a little over 2 years total.

Our attorney sent an email to SEF Azores in Oct 2022 asking about the delay, and they responded the next week saying they needed updated information on the property we are renovating in Porto which was immediately sent to them. Specifically they needed caderneta predial, certidĂŁo permanente predial and declaration from the Porto City Hall stating that the property is located in an area qualified as ARU (which means area of urban rehabilitation).

All of this information was provided initially, unclear why they needed it again.

The request to pay came via an email to our attorney rather than a notification on the sef website.

Remind me how long it should be until we get our cards now that we’ve paid?

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Sounds as if you’ve been very patient. So a year’s wait for each stage. Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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Hi, sharing our timelines for the benefit of others:

  1. Property purchase - June 2021.
  2. Pre Approval - Aug 2021.
  3. Biometrics - Nov 2021 in Azores.
  4. Final approvals - Nov 2022.
  5. Cards issued - Dec 2022.
  6. Cards received in hand - Jan 2023.
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Azores usually takes 3-4 weeks to issue the cards then 2 weeks to deliver to your lawyers.

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Thanks for sharing and congrats!

As a side note, seems like things are moving
 just slowly.

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Thanks for sharing, but your timeline is probably not very relevant to anyone who applied in Dec '21 or later. 5 months from investment to biometrics is the dream! I think I will be lucky to see pre-approval in 12 months.

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The waiting game really went from bad to worse after Oct 2021


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Yes we got lucky there. Our lawyers choose Azores as at that time that particular office was supposed to be fastest plus we only had that option. Post that it still took 12 months from bio to cards which otherwise earlier was taking 4-6 months in this office.