No. of Recommendations: 8
Thought I would offer an update on my expatriation journey. I spent literally months trying and failing to get fingerprints taken through USPS - a combination of human and technology factors - before admitting defeat and using a commercial channeler. Which I should have done much earlier. Once that was done things moved along relatively well - used a Lisbon attorney to acquire NIF / bank account, eventually beat the VFS agency website into submission enough to actually get an appointment (their humans are fine, but their database and UI appear to have been designed by ketamine-addicted code monkeys), and submitted the D8 visa application in early January. I hope for approval sometime in April though VFS provides essentially zero visibility into what happens after your appointment - is it sitting on a shelf at VFS? Has it been forwarded to the Counsulate? Who knows. The only data I actually have is that Chase has not paid the cashier's check for my visa fee yet, but that's not unusual.
I managed to find a cheap 12 month lease on a room in a shared house than can be cancelled on 10 days notice, though it is a real lease registered with the Finance portal as the visa application requires. I will probably never occupy it - rent an AirBnB on arrival while working with a local agent to find a real long-term rental - and the difference between paying 700 Euros for one month I'm not using it, and maybe 10,000 Euros for a long-term lease on an actual property I would not have seen beforehand, was compelling.
I had wanted to get out before January 20th. At this point I'm just hoping that the US is still a sufficiently functioning country by the time I get my visa that I can still get out. In particular that USDA has enough remaining employees to endorse the EU pet paperwork in the very narrow 10 day window that's required, because I am not going without my cats. My Hail Mary backup plan would be to drive them across the border into Canada (presuming we are not at war with Canada by April) and go through a Canadian vet for the paperwork. Hopefully it won't get that bad, that soon, but anything is imaginable now.
