The Visa Application
As I mentioned in my previous blog about moving to Portugal, things keep changing in regards to the whole process and timeline for moving over there. We had been planning to go to Portugal in January in hopes of finding our home ahead of our move, so we can qualify for a mortgage, while still gainfully employed in the US. Turns out, you hand over your passport in the visa meeting. I mean you don’t have to, but there were some things that were unclear about the timing of things, and so we just decided to hand them over. This creates some new challenges on the house buying front, but that is a whole other post.
This post is about the actual visa meeting: our closest visa office is in San Francisco. Fortunately it’s only a 90 minute flight from Portland, so we got up at 4:30 AM, and caught a 7:00 AM flight, for our 3:00 PM interview. The interview was set to last 30 minutes, so we booked our return flight home for 7:50 that evening. Easy peasy! Conveniently, the Visa office (VFS Global) was located an 8 minute walk away from SFMOMA, so that was our plan for the day.
A small fraction of the line for security at PDX.
The Portland airport (PDX) is notoriously easy, but when we arrived it was an absolute clusterfuck. The D, E terminal line extended from one end of the airport to the other. Thankfully we were flying from the B, C terminal and walked right up to the TSA agent with out boarding docs, ready to sail through security… only Nick’s birth year on his boarding pass was 10 years off from his actual bday (his sister hooked us up with her Alaska air miles for the trip and had accidentally put in the wrong date- super grateful for the hook up on the flight!). So we had to get out of line, and go back to the Alaska counter, which had an epic line. I hopped in line, and Nick went in search of some faster way to remedy the situation. He did, and we were back in the security line, but now nothing was moving and we started to worry we’d miss our flights. We made it and had an easy flight to SFO.
On the plane and waiting to take off!
It was a gray and rainy day in San Francisco, like Portland but warmer and the rain is real rain, not just the mist we usually have here. We caught a cab to SFMOMA, had breakfast nearby, and then spent a few hours looking at art and trying not to be nervous about the whole visa meeting, I was delighted to see that one of the exhibits was Yayoi Kasuma: Infinite Love, AND that despite saying “sold out” online, we were able to snag tickets to experience the two other worldly rooms she created. Also on display, the art of Pacita Abad, a new to me artist that I instantly fell in love with. After a few hours at MOMA, it was time to grab a bite and head out.
One odd thing about the visa offices, their website insisted that no bags of any kind, or laptops were allowed in the building. And further more there was no place on site to secure them. You were only to bring your documents in a clear plastic bag. Not super helpful when you’re traveling for the day. But I located a bag check place right next to MOMA, and we would just drop it off on the way to the meeting. We stopped for a quick lunch, thinking we had things timed just right, but of course when I went online at lunch to book the bag drop, the place was totally full! I found another, a bit further away, but it seemed doable.
I ended up inhaling my salad and we had 30 minutes to walk to the bag place, check the bag, and then walk back to the visa office. Oh, and it’s POURING rain now. My sweet, and usually very zen husband is kind of in freak out mode and takes off running. I run to keep up, but I’ve been dealing with this hip thing, which really slows me down (and hurts). We make good time to the bag place, quickly check the bag, and we’re off running back down the sidewalk and 8 minutes later, into the visa offices at 2:53 pm for our 3:00 PM meeting! Woo!
Soaked and sweaty, after our rainy run to the visa office.
Soaking wet, and a little smelly, we grab our seats. Once we catch our collective breath, we look around… EVERYBODY has bags, and most people have laptops! WTF?! I shuffle through the stack of pages printed from the VFS Global website and find the page about NOT bringing any bags. It’s there on bold print, plain as day! Gah! At 4:10, when we are finally called for our 3:00 meeting, I ask the clerk, (named Ace) about the bag rule. “where did you see that?” he says, with a sort of smirk. I hand him the print out, and he giggles and shows it to his co-workers. Jokes on us apparently. This is for the DC office only, but it doesn’t say that anywhere.
The meeting is fine. We joke with Ace, he jokes back, but also tick-tock, because we need to get across town in rush hour traffic and catch our flight home. Mostly just shuffling of the numerous documents we printed out: marriage certificate, passports and passport copies, FBI crimimal background check, lease agreement for portugal, 3 months bank statements from each of our back accounts, statements from a funded portuguese account, our NIF (portuguese tax id) numbers, declaration that it is ok for the Portuguese government to to background checks on us, photos, fingerprints, application, and checklist. It’s nearly 5:25 when we finish, and the meeting ends with an anticlimactic, “ok, you’re all set.”
We’re still not sure how long we’ll wait to hear something. It could be 30 days, or 90 days, or 6 months, according to our buddy Ace. Also he says, too bad you’re too late for the NHR tax regime, the whole reason we expedited this process in the first place! But he back pedals a little when he sees my expression sink, “well things are constantly changing there, and nobody knows for certain what’s happening. You might be ok.” And with that reassuring proclamation, we’re headed back down the stairs, and off to get out bag and get back to SFO. The rain has stopped, we get a cab with ease, and the traffic back to the airport is easy. We even have enough time for a well earned (stupidly over priced) stiff drink at the bar. By 9:30 pm we are back home with our dogs.
A description from one of the collections at SFMOMA- seemed to sum up our day perfectly.
Next up, trying to figure out housing- buying in Portugal, and renting our home here. I have been telling the universe, I need a unicorn renter: a potter, who may want to do a little production work for me while I am in Portugal AND will let me come back 1-2 times a year to work in my studio. Oh and, they want to care for our garden and run our Airbnb for us too. And the crazy thing… I may have just found that very person! Fingers crossed…
I used to do this thing I called Impersonating Art at museums, and since my pants matched this piece so well I had to give it a whirl, but stay. tuned because the next post is a throwback to my silly art impersonation days…