Once you have received your very first ARI card, the count for the mandatory days of stays begins from the issuing date of that card:
- no primeiro ano, 7 dias seguidos ou interpolados, e 14 dias, seguidos ou
interpolados, nos subsequentes períodos de 2 anos.
So any subsequent dates of extensions or renewals should not affect that calculation.
yep I wrote back that IRN does not handle my ARI, lets hope they read it this time.
Just curious to know - you are emailing AIMA by yourself because you do not plan to use a lawyer for renewal?
No I am using a lawyer, but I hate just sitting there not doing anything (because my lawyer isn’t) so I’m doing what I could
Hey Nachito! Congrats on the progress! My residence permit expired in Jan and for the last 7 months my lawyer has not been able to get an appointment. The fact that you took action yourself and got an appointment is super inspiring to me and I want to try that too.
May I ask which email address you sent your email to? And what information you provided in the email? Thank you and looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Dave
Seven months ago nothing was moving - you could ask your lawyer to try again, saying you’re hearing from the grapevine that things have started moving again since mid-March and several people have got renewal appointments by email.
Right but the reading of that statement is that you need to spend the 14 days within the two year period starting on the date of issue but if the cards are extended does it extend the time frame In which you can spend the 14 days In Portugal? We have not spent the entire 14 days yet, and technically our cards are expired, we are waiting to get an appointment for a renewal to spend the rest of the days just before the appointment. Would that count?
Not sure I’d play that game. You’ve invested a lot of time/money/agony in the PT GV. When it finally comes time for you to apply for citizenship, do you really want some clerk who is a stickler for the rules counting your days in that exact two year period and declaring you did not have enough? You’ll notice on this forum that AIMA, Finanças, etc. clerks sometimes have their own interpretation of ‘the rules.’
No. See my post above with the quote of the official AIMA requirement.
Extensions or renewals do not matter at all for the counting of days, which starts on the date of the first card issuance date.
You are supposed to spend min. 7 days in your first year, and 14 days in each 2 years thereafter. These are not calendar years, but one year terms counting from the first card issuance date.
they wrote nothing and just forwarded me the first email 
this is so ridiculous its funny
After an in person renewal appointment, does the agent indicate that your renewal has been approved? Or do they just thank you and send you on your way?
Are they just document takers or do they have the ability to actually approve the renewal if everything is in order?
Has anyone managed to secure an appointment for a renewal in the upcoming months? I have heard that appointments are only being given to those applying for cards for the first time and that if you want a renewal, you are just not getting an appointment. Is this correct?
I just had a renewal appointment on Tuesday, so it is possible. Though I tried many different times to get one scheduled, I believe AIMA is just scheduling them based on how long ago your card expired.
Could you please answer a few questions? When did your card expire? Did you schedule the appointment via email to AIMA? How often did you send the request via email? When was the last date you sent an email?
Our cards expired in January. I sent email at least once a day, starting in November. We also asked CLAIM for help, but they said they were also having no luck with AIMA at that point.
The appointment letters didn’t reference any of the emails or CLAIM or anything else. They just gave a date and instructions on which AIMA office to go to. We live in the Lisbon area at this point, but the appointment was for Porto. I had said in the letters that any office was fine, so they may have read that when scheduling, but there is no way to be sure. I frankly think that they are just going down the list by time of expiry, but I have no data which could confirm or disprove that.
Once you get the new biometrics done and leave the office, there also doesn’t appear to be any way to track it now; the old SEF site and new ari.aima sites don’t show anything but the fact that there was an appointment.
Is the payment of the renewal fee taken on-site by card before you leave the office?
It was taken on site for us.
Thank you for the additional information regarding your renewal appointment.
My dependent (spouse) had a renewal appointment in early March in Lisboa. Updated documentation (criminal check, marriage certificate, proof of stay, etc.) was collected, but the AIMA agent was unable to perform an on-the-spot renewal approval. The renewal “application” fee was paid, but we are still awaiting communication from AIMA that the renewal has been “approved”, along with the applicable DUC.
Did you receive full approval, or are you also waiting?
I believe we were approved during the appointment, but AIMA could always come back to us later, I suppose. That’s why I was looking for a way to track the process on the website.