It’s official! We’re Portuguese residents!

The reality hits in waves: we get to stay in Portugal! We’re officially Portuguese residents now!

“I’m having a pinch-me moment,” Bill said a few days after our long-awaited appointment with the immigration department – the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras, popularly known as SEF.

I laughed with joy because I’d been having those same moments. We were riding our bikes on a narrow cobblestone street through a village where bougainvillea draped its gorgeous magenta blossoms over a stone wall, a rooster crowed, and bells rang out from a small church that could have been built in the 1300s.

“We’re living in Europe! And we get to stay!” I thought. I know that sounds ridiculous because we’ve been living in our lovely, adopted town of Alcobaça for nearly a year. But our long road to becoming Portuguese residents and getting our residents cards has been so elongated that there was always that niggle in the backs of our minds that we’d somehow get turned away.

All the research we’d done beforehand told us that the process should have taken about six months. Instead, it was just over a year. Patience, patience. I’ve truly improved my skills at waiting patiently; but then again, I’ve had lots of practice here.

Each of the three stages took twice as long as it normally should have, mainly because Portugal has been restructuring SEF. (It’s not just me – even SEF agents are impatient. As I write this, they’re on rotating strikes to protest how long the restructuring is taking.)

• We began the process of uploading documentation in early May 2022, expecting that we’d reach the first hurdle – an appointment at the Portuguese Embassy in Ottawa, Canada – within a few weeks. But it took six weeks.
• Next, we expected to get our D7 visas in about two months, since an Embassy official had assured us that’s how long it normally took. Nope. It took 3.5 months.
• The D7 visa is good for four months, to cover the time until your SEF appointment in Portugal, normally three months later. However, we waited for 7.5 months – from late September 2022 until May 8, 2023 – hence that niggle in our minds. Since our D7 visa officially expired at the end of January, we’ve been in a bit of a grey zone. If we had left Portugal, it may have been hard to get back in; so, we stayed put (and signed up for intense Portuguese lessons in the meantime, since we couldn’t travel much anyhow).

Our appointment was in the city of Leiria, about 30 minutes away. The SEF office is quite close to Leiria’s hilltop castle, which somehow seemed appropriate: castles were daunting centres of power in their heyday; today, SEF holds a similarly daunting, powerful hold over the imaginations of fretting expats waiting for that appointment.

The process is not written down anywhere official, but instead is shared by word-of-mouth and social media. Any gathering of expats we’ve been to inevitably includes a discussion about SEF.

“When’s your SEF appointment? Where’s your appointment? Do you and your husband/wife/partner/children have appointments in the same city? That question seems unreasonable, but the fact is that SEF routinely splits families when scheduling appointments. We know of many couples where each had their appointments in different cities at exactly the same time. Even children have been given appointments in different cities from their parents at the same time!

Once you find someone who had their appointment in the same city where yours is scheduled, the grilling begins. Is the office hard to find? Where did you park? Which documents did they ask for? Did they ask for an SNS number? Did the staff speak any English? How long did it take to get your card? Was it delivered to your mailbox or did you have to sign for it at the post office?

As you can sense, this appointment looms large in expat minds.

Luckily, Bill and I both had appointments in the same city, on the same day, with mine an hour after Bill’s.

Preparing for the appointment was an excuse to buy office supplies. (I do love a good office supply store!) I assembled a binder for each of us, with page protectors and sticky tabs for each of the documents we might need: application form filled out in Portuguese, bank account and investment records (to prove you have enough money to support yourselves), lease, Atestado de Residência (which certifies your Portuguese address), health insurance, Portuguese financial number, and passports. Just in case, I also had our birth certificates, marriage certificate, RCMP criminal record check, and other banking documents. Basically, we just took every official document we owned.

The day finally arrived. Clutching our binders, we found the SEF office and showed our appointment slip to gain entry to the building. The staff members were helpful, friendly and even spoke English, although we tried our improving Portuguese. Bill was called in first and I joined him 20 minutes later. Not all our documents were needed but we were able to whip them out quickly when asked due to our well-organized binders.

After being fingerprinted and photographed, we left with a paper document that we thought was our approval for our residents cards, while we waited for the actual cards to arrive in the mail. So, we went off to celebrate.

However, when we got home and translated that paper, we realized it was an application for our residents cards; we hadn’t actually been approved yet. We had flights home to Canada booked for two weeks later and would need our cards to get back into Portugal. Would we get our cards in time? Some of our expat friends had received their cards within a week, while others had waited several months. Bill had read about someone who got turned down because he didn’t have enough money in his Portuguese bank account and had just nine days to file an appeal.  

So, the mailbox watch game began. After a week, I really began to worry. But, lo and behold! After 11 days, and with just one more mail delivery day before we left for Canada, our cards arrived! I was shocked and ecstatic at the same time. We practically danced in the lobby beside the mailboxes. We were finally, truly Portuguese residents!

Our cards are good for two years, after which they can be renewed online for three more years. After five years, we can apply for Portuguese citizenship if we want to, or we can continue to be Portuguese residents.

At this point, we don’t know what we’ll do. We’re remaining flexible and open, to see what the future brings. If there’s one thing the last three Covid years has taught us, it’s to be flexible and change plans quickly.

Meanwhile, we shall explore more of Europe. Hey! We’re living in Europe! Pinch me!

We became Portuguese residents in May 2023. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.