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- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 6
After a failed initial residency card appointment in July for lack of a PT SSN (NISS), I spent the next two months sorting out how to get one, succeeding just in time for my rescheduled appointment last week. They actually accepted my paperwork this time, though that's no guarantee of the card being issued. But still, progress.
AIMA (PT equivalent of ICE, except they do not have masked thugs kidnapping people off the streets, just an underfunded bureaucracy) seems to be changing the requirements for initial and renewal residency cards on an almost daily basis now, generating enormous confusion amongst those of us stuck in the process. At my appointment they also wanted a number of documents that are not on what is supposed to be the definitive list of required documents on their website. Fortunately I had them, having acquired enough cynicism about the process that I brought every document I had that might be somehow relevant to residency.
The AIMA agents have all been perfectly nice and kind people IME, but they seem to have enormous latitude to subjectively interpret the rules or make up new rules, which means every interaction relies only on anecdotal evidence from those who have come before. Hopefully that is less true of the back-office reviewers who actually approve the applications. I suspect much the same is true of the PT tax system, so first year taxes as a high-wage remote worker will be exciting.
I don't regret coming, but there are a bunch of things I would have done differently before arrival, knowing what I know now. With the in-process changes here to increase time-to-citizenship to 10 years instead of 5, Spain might have been a good alternative.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Hey oddhack.
Coincidentally I just had my renewal interview with AIMA this morning. This
is a relief because my initial residency expired last March. As you note,
however, they don't have ICE agents waiting around to pick us up and ship
us to El Salvador.
You're probably aware that AIMA was a newly created agency and has been pulling
everything together in a makeshift fashion on the fly. At my interview location
there were obvious signs of a hastily assembled processing area (folding tables,
tape on the floor, etc.) Also it appeared that less than half of the workers
were Portuguese, i.e. most of them immigrants themselves. Overall I had a good
experience this morning. All my documents had been uploaded to their website, so
after a cursory review, I was processed within 30 minutes.
Like you, I'm unhappy with the proposed rule to extend citizenship from
5 to 10 years' residency, but I can still apply for permanent residency
(without citizenship) in less than 3 years -- which will put the renewal
hassles behind me.
-Rubic
No. of Recommendations: 1
All my documents had been uploaded to their website, so
after a cursory review, I was processed within 30 minutes.
I am hoping they've fully sorted out the processes by my renewal time in 2 years. I asked about some of the documents they wanted that were also in my visa application and the agent said yes, they were in the system, but she still needed the paper documents and could not just reuse them / move them into the residency card process.
In some ways PT digitalization works very well (opening a work activity on the tax portal was very straightforward) but not so much with immigration docs, yet.
