Adventures in Temporary Residence
The Uncertainty of Being a Guest
Hi everybody!
We are deep into the European vacation season (aka August). Many local businesses are closed for the month and the residents have fled to far-flung places like the Algarve. Foreign tourists still abound. It makes for an interesting vibe.
This week, I’m diving into:
Adventures in Temporary Residence
Quick hits
Let’s get to it!
The Uncertainty of Being a Guest
Having an American passport entitles us to come and go from the USA as we please and easily gets us into most other countries. We can visit Europe and stay in the Schengen Zone for up to 90 days without a visa. It’s ingrained in us that we have this deep freedom of movement (and I acknowledge the huge privilege that comes with it).
As temporary residents of Portugal, our Título da Residência (residence card) enables us to stick around Portugal and move freely within the Schengen without any restrictions. It’s pretty great.
But… our residence card is only good for two years, and then it has to be renewed. Upon renewal, it’s good for another three. Then we can move on to permanent residency and a passport.
Two years seems like a long time, but my card runs out in November. Time moves fast! I’ve discovered that renewal isn’t easy, or quick, and if my card expires, things get problematic.
It’s illegal for us to be in other Schengen countries with an expired residence card (since we are way over our normal 90-day tourist visa), and if we leave the EU/Schengen Zone, we might not be allowed back in unless we fly directly into Portugal.
So what’s the problem, you ask? Just renew it before it expires, right? lol 😂
Residency renewal opens up 90 days before expiry, and there are two ways to do it:
An in-person appointment with the immigration agency (AIMA) where you have to provide all sorts of paperwork to show you meet the renewal criteria, or
An online “automatic renovation” via the AIMA portal.
In classic bureaucratic fashion, AIMA is notoriously disorganized, underfunded, and overworked. They don’t allow walk-ins, and you have to call a number, sometimes hundreds of times for weeks on end, to try and get one of only a few available appointments. It’s nearly impossible.
Online renewals are much easier because they don’t require appointments or paperwork. However, the ability to renew online doesn’t seem to open until sometime soon before (sometimes even after) card expiration dates.
Regardless of your choice, getting your new card can take weeks or months. The result is that many immigrants are left indefinitely with expired residence cards.
This is fine if we stay in Portugal because the government automatically extends the validity of our cards for up to a year (to compensate for the backlog). But if, like me, you have an international trip planned, it puts you in a bit of a bind.
I’m flying to the USA two days before my card expires, so I have two choices: push to get an appointment soon and hope my new card comes in time, or gamble on an expired card by booking a flight straight back into Portugal.
It’s not an impossible choice, but it certainly is an eye-opening experience to lose my usual freedom of movement. To have the legality of my existence here all of a sudden be tentative. To lose my privilege as an EU resident until a bureaucrat gets my file off their desk.
Wish me luck.
Quick Hits
I’m settling back into my cycling routine and recently found someone to ride with! Last Saturday we saddled up together for the first time and rode 90km down the coast to Aveiro. It took us along rivers and beaches, through forests, across wetlands, into the cornfields, and along many a backcountry road. Totally epic. I’m excited to extend my bicycling reach farther afield now that I have someone to roll with.
Our apartment project continues, and the few lingering issues to be resolved by the builder aren’t necessarily small. It looks like we will be replacing almost all of the flooring! Fortunately, we are heading out of town in November, and that’s perfect timing for that size of project. More details to come.
Our friends went away for 3 weeks on vacation and loaned us one of their cars. So far it’s been mostly Hilary using it for runs to the farmer’s market, the local nursery, and home stores far from the metro. But we’re plotting some opportunities to get out into nature
So last Sunday we struck out on a car-based adventure to find a beach to the south of Espinho that had been recommended to us by a few folks. In classic Portuguese summer fashion, the beach was foggy and weird. Not cold, not hot, just white, with red-flag waves (no swimming allowed). So we scooted inland to find a 9th-century castle to climb around on. There’s always something great around the corner here.
We also took a train ride up to Póvoa de Varzim, which is at the north end of one of the metro lines on the coast. It’s an hour away, and full of surprises. It’s a bustling beach community that’s hopping in the summer, and it has also been inhabited for thousands of years. There is a huge intact Roman aqueduct nearby and examples all around of the runic-type symbol “writing” that existed here long before written alphabets. Crazy stuff!
My social planner (Hilary) has been booking us for multiple engagements per week - mostly dinners - since we got back from our Italy trip. It’s been fun but exhausting. Glad I’m working out so hard in between all this eating and drinking!
How is your summer going?
This week’s music is a collection of the bops (mostly new, some old) that I’ve been really feeling this last month. It’s got a little bit of everything in it. Enjoy!
Great update! Good luck with your renewal.
I am sure you will make it happen as everything else. You have done so much already and are getting to be pros at dealing with bureaucracy. Surprisingly few people are aware of 3 months restrictions. With UK out of EU too I am more than ever diligent in keeping multiple nationalities passports for us, our kids and grandkids applied for and then renewed in time. Made a mistake of having some lapsed once and it wasn’t a smart or easy thing to rectify.