Portuguese Residency Part 2

This is my long overdue follow-up to the original post on how to get a Portuguese residency here, which is only partly because of my laziness and mostly because of the long patience-testing process here. It took me 8–9 months to receive my residency card after my SEF(Now AIMA) appointment, for some people it’s been much less, and for some, it’s been more.

As far as I know, I was the first person to apply for the Digital Nomad residency Visa (D8) from India and the first to receive the residency card.

TLDR; Timelines;

• Jan 3rd, 2023 — VFS appointment.
• Feb 21st — I got my Visa on the passport.
• June 6th — SEF appointment for document submission. All documents were good except they needed my work contract translated.
• June 12th — I submitted the work contract translated and attested as I didn’t have that at the time of the original appointment.
• Long wait + email exchanged just saying it’s “under consideration/analysis”
• Sept 14th — I received communication from my SEF branch(Alverca) stating that I needed to submit my NISS.
• Sept 19th — I got my NISS document and emailed it to my SEF branch. They acknowledged the receipt and said it was “under analysis” again.
• Dec 1st — Visited my SEF center to ask for an update. Still “under analysis”. (I had done about 3 such visits before this as well.)
• Jan 8th, 2024 — I see the change of status on the SEF website where you can make an appointment. “Extension of stay” in new appointment has changed to “Renewal of Residency”.
• Jan 15th — I visited my SEF center in Alverca again, this time they told me that the card has been sent for printing and I should receive it soon, maybe in 2–3 weeks.
• Feb 8th — The day I greeted my mailman with a big smile, accepted my residency card, and signed for the same!

List of documents I submitted for my SEF appointment in the Alverca branch -

• Passport copy.
• Attestado du residencia.
• NIF document.
• Local Bank statement signed and stamped by the bank.
• Letter from my company stating my employment.
• My SNS number/Utente — provisional which you can get over email without the residency card.
• Work contract translated. (Later on June 12th)
• NISS document. (Later in September)

The long story and the nuances of my case -

Considering all things and looking back now, having my first VFS appointment on January 3rd, 2023, and having a residency card in my hand on February 8th, 2024 doesn’t sound too bad. The waiting for a year feels long and anxiety-inducing while you experience it, but that’s the price to pay as well.
Besides bureaucratic work just taking time as it does in most countries, the reasons I think it took longer than expected -

• SEF a private agency handling immigration for Portugal was being merged under the government and was being named AIMA, this was to be done before October 2023. Right in the middle of my processing timeline.
• The peak summer vacation time of August/September comes during that time and a lot of people are on vacation then.
• The Portuguese prime minister was caught in a scandal and then resigned. For some reason, this affected the printing of residency cards.
• The new nature of the D8 visa, they weren’t sure of what documents to ask for right at the start and asked for additional documents 3 months later.

I had an additional problem to deal with as I had moved my residency address from the time of the initial submission of my documents and the time I received my card. I had set up mail forwarding via CTT (Portuguese post) which is a paid service. This worked flawlessly. I can say this with confidence now but till I didn’t get it in my hand there was a high level of anxiety and maybe a chance it gets sent back then I would need to find out how to collect the residency card from my center. I’m glad that I didn’t have to deal with one more complication here.

Additional note about NHR -

During this period, there was also news about the NHR scheme being canceled and people had only time till March 2024 to register for it. As soon as I heard this news, I worked on getting the NHR so I’m grandfathered into the program for 10 years. For this the NIF that I had needed to have my residency address as I had initially got it with representation. You have to change the address from the tax portal, you can request this and upload documents online. Once this is done, you just have to register for the NHR status. This whole process took about a week and I made sure I had my NHR status registered by the end of 2023 to not have any issues on this front.

Conclusions

The whole process seems to be a bit of a black box and a lot of waiting. This makes it sound super intimidating. But with a little help and encouragement along the way it is very doable on your own. There are options to use lawyers to handle this for your end to end or talk to lawyers to get some questions answered. But based on my experience the best advice has come from people that have gone through the process themselves and have had more on the line than when a lawyer is handling it for you. A lawyer charges an average of ~€200 for a call for an hour or in the range of ~€2500 half paid up front to handle the process end-to-end. Using a lawyer is convenient and gives you a single point of contact but this doesn’t speed up the process in any way, the bureaucracy will take as much time and that differs from a case-to-case basis.

As always, do your own research, YMMV.

I have tried to cover everything that may come up in the previous post and this one, but besides that I’m happy to answer any questions you may have! The quickest way to get a question answered is to leave it in a note here.

If you’d like my consultancy as a service for a small one-time fee, check this. This isn’t making me any money, it’s just keeping it serious for both parties and trying to help more people.

#DigitalNomad #RemoteWork #Portugal #PortugueseResidency #PR #D7Visa #D7 #DRVisa #D7 #D8 #D8Visa