Greetings everyone,
I hope this finds you in good health, and that you got to enjoy your Labor Day weekend (and possibly participated in a protest march, as it appears there were many!).
Good news here: we're finally one step closer (in baby steps) to renewing our resident visas. In early August, we woke up one Sunday morning to an email from the immigration service (AIMA) asking us to make our payment for renewal in order to begin the process ... done! A few days later, our second emails arrived with a link to upload a number of documents in preparation for our appointments, which, we were told, were scheduled on August 18th (lucky we had no other plans). As it happens, I'm a member of a WhatsApp group of immigrants from around the world who are living in Porto and the surrounding cities/towns in the north. Suddenly, my cellphone was pinging with messages because we weren't the only people who finally received emails from AIMA. I've mentioned before how the immigration service in Portugal was woefully behind in processing renewals, to the tune of 400,000 behind as of late last year. On that Sunday when we first received our emails from AIMA, so did thousands of others who also have expired visas. And in the days following, thousands more emails were sent out, so it was obvious that the government was finally pushing AIMA to get this done. It became a mad dash to pull together the documents that were being requested and getting them uploaded in time. On the day of our appointments, which were scheduled within 1/2 hour of each other and in the same location, we sat with clerks who reviewed our documents, made sure everything was in order and then sent us for our fingerprints and photos. I later learned that many couples were scheduled in separate cities from one another, and typically on the same day, so we were fortunate to have ours in the same place. Suddenly AIMA had satellite offices everywhere, trying to process all these renewals, and most shocking of all, it was happening in August, when most Europeans take vacation, when many restaurants close for the month and when bus schedules change/get cut, but AIMA was suddenly supercharged.
Now, that is not to say that we now have renewed visas. In actuality, we now have to wait for someone, somewhere in AIMA land, to review our documents, verify that we have no criminal records here, and approve our 3-year extensions. Then, they have to make new cards and mail them to us and, so far, no one that we know has received their new cards, even friends who had appointments back in June. The government has given us a blanket extension until October 15th, however that is only recognized in Portugal. It remains to be seen whether we all will receive our new cards by then, but we're hopeful. Last month I wrote about the new changes to immigration rules that would require we wait for 10 years before being eligible for citizenship, rather than 5 years, which was the rule when we arrived. In August, the President of Portugal vetoed the bill after parts of it were deemed unconstitutional, so now Parliament is going back to the drawing board to revise it. There is a new provision being suggested that would make the wait to apply for citizenship 6 years from the date of arrival instead of the 10 years first proposed. They are due to discuss these changes and more later in September so again we wait to see what happens. CHEGA, our far right party in government, hates immigrants (who does that remind you of) but unfortunately for them, it appears that foreigners living in Portugal (which exceeded one million people in 2024) have actually saved Social Security in Portugal by adding to significantly their coffers.
In the meantime, we've been enjoying taking the new ferry service from the Porto side of the Douro to the Gaia side, to Afurada specifically, which is a parish of Gaia. Afurada is a cute little area that is absolutely loaded with fish restaurants. You can smell the fish cooking on the outdoor grills before the boat lands. Right now this is a four month experiment by the transportation department to see if this is a viable service. Because it's part of the bus/metro service, we can use our monthly passes to make the crossing each way. Hopefully, the restaurants in Gaia and Porto are enjoying the increase in business. Fingers crossed that they keep this service.
Nick and I spent this past weekend in Nazaré. Nazaré is the home of the 100 ft. waves, though that normally happens in winter, not now. Nevertheless, it's a darling town about 3 hours away, with a rich fishing history as well as a more recent surfing history. The town was bursting with tourists and the weather was perfect, sunny in the low 70's. There is a lower part of town where the beach area attracts sunbathers and the upper part of town, where the big wave surfing takes place. Since we don't have a car, we took the funicular up the hill to get the dazzling views of the area. Interestingly, on every corner and sometimes in between, we saw old women usually dressed in the traditional garb of gathered skirts in black or traditional patterns, sitting in chairs and holding signs offering their homes/apartments and/or rooms for rent. It's like live "pop-up advertising."
