Okay, if you’re going to stay in a foreign country for an extended period of time you’re going to need to get a visa. An extended stay visa (duh). In our case whats known as a “Shengen” visa. As I understand it a shengen visa allows you access to all the countries in the “shengen” zone which is essentially the European Union.
We had to go to the closest Portuguese consulate to our residence in the US which also happened to be in New Bedford (convenient for our shipping situation). The ladies there were super nice and extremely helpful. They laid out a pretty simple and concise list of the things we would need……
- An FBI background check
- Proof of sufficient funds to cover our stay
- Proof of ongoing income for the future
- Current ID’s (of course)
- Plane tickets booked to Sao Miguel
- A list of places we had booked to stay at
- Passports
- Separate passport photos
- Travel insurance.
Not too bad, right? But let’s break it down a little.
- For the FBI check you need to get fingerprinted at either a nearby FBI office or your local police station. Not all FBI offices do fingerprinting and many require an appointment so that can be a pain but the upside is that you know the record will be in an acceptable form. After looking into that route we decided to try our local cops. In Abington they use the electronic image system which we assumed would be perfect but the officer who did it wasn’t sure it was the correct format for the FBI so we also had him print out paper copies in case they were required. You apply online for a background check (form I-783) with all the required ID information (cost $18.00 US each). You then have to send the report that you receive from the FBI to a company that will generate what’s called an Apostille. That company takes the report that you got from the FBI, sends it back to them, they have to confirm that they (the FBI) generated that report and when they do the company sends you your Apostille which is the officially verified copy of your background report. Makes sense, right? The government generates a report that’s not official until some other company sends it back to them so that they can verify that it’s official? Of course! We used a company by the name of US Authentication Services for our Apostilles because they hand deliver to the FBI so it’s much quicker than others. The cost was $57.20 US for each Apostille. The consulate stressed that the Apostille is the single most important document that you’ll file so treat it like Gold!
- For proof of sufficient funds we gave them copies of statements from all of our bank accounts. We also gave them a copy of the purchase and sales agreement on our house to show that we would have enough money to purchase a place in our new home.
- For ongoing income I submitted my projected Social Security distributions starting 6 months in the future and we told them our business plan to open a “B and B” in our new house.
- Drivers licenses
- Plane tickets to show when we intended to go.
- We gave them a list of the five “B and B’s” that Susie had booked for from 4 to 10 days each in different spots around the island and they made us show emails from real estate agents that we had made appointments with to see houses on the island.
- Passports (which they held onto until the visas were ready)
- Extra passport photos.
- International travel insurance.
The entire process, from visa applications to picking them up took around two months. In the mean time they asked us a couple of times for more info including a letter from my boss proving when I retired (don’t know why) and why we would want to move from the US to a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. Finally they came barely one week before our flight date!