Golden Visa programme: It Is Possible to Renew It Online
The online renewal of residence permits in Portuguese territory for foreigners will be available this week and for the first time it also includes Portugal’s Golden Visa programme.
The measure, which the Government had already used last year, aims to overcome the congestion at SEF – The Immigration and Border Service in-person and telephone service desks. In October, SEF registered a peak of 29 million call attempts in a 12-hour period, when the daily capacity of the staff does not exceed three thousand calls. The call centre could not withstand the pressure and simply stopped working.
Last year, thousands of immigrants, most of them Brazilians, were unable to leave Portugal and many of them prevented from getting a job or opening a bank account because their residence permits had expired.
This time, the automatic renewal will be available, in a first phase, for the approximately 21,500 visas that will expire between 1st January and 31st March, according to SEF, "with a guarantee of compliance with security rules and mitigation of the consequences resulting from the health emergency" caused by the pandemic and will then be extended in stages until the end of the year.
Citizens who can automatically renew expired residence permits are those whose biometric data has already been collected and whose documentation is already submitted and approved by SEF.
According to the decree-law that exceptionally extends this regime, this, and other measures "stem from the fact that the pandemic has had a significant impact on in-person desks public services, which has resulted in an increase on pending requests for granting and renewal of residence permits".
Therefore, the Government is allowing expired documents relating to stay in Portuguese territory to continue to be considered valid until 31 December 2023 and even after that date, upon proof of scheduling for their renewal, provided that the expiry occurred from 15 December onwards.
Family reunification processes of EU citizens family members were left outside from this "automatic renewal", as the authorities consider that they can turn to other alternatives: one of these is to apply for renewal of their residence permits at SEF counters.
Currently, there are 225,000 applications to reside in Portugal pending evaluation. And in mid-October, there were also 19,000 requests for renewal of residence permits for investment activities, also known as Portugal’s Golden Visa. This situation has also led to many complaints because online revalidation is simply not possible.
The online renewal functionality should have been available this week. However, the Portuguese government sent out a notice with a new deadline to launch the online submission system, which will be March 2023.
The online renewal functionality should be available this week, which will give more agility to all requests, making the process faster and more efficient.
This information has been released by the Portuguese media without an official confirmation from SEF – The Immigration and Border Service. We will keep you posted on further updates.
Source: Público
