Subject: Making slow progress in Portugal
After a failed initial residency card appointment in July for lack of a PT SSN (NISS), I spent the next two months sorting out how to get one, succeeding just in time for my rescheduled appointment last week. They actually accepted my paperwork this time, though that's no guarantee of the card being issued. But still, progress.

AIMA (PT equivalent of ICE, except they do not have masked thugs kidnapping people off the streets, just an underfunded bureaucracy) seems to be changing the requirements for initial and renewal residency cards on an almost daily basis now, generating enormous confusion amongst those of us stuck in the process. At my appointment they also wanted a number of documents that are not on what is supposed to be the definitive list of required documents on their website. Fortunately I had them, having acquired enough cynicism about the process that I brought every document I had that might be somehow relevant to residency.

The AIMA agents have all been perfectly nice and kind people IME, but they seem to have enormous latitude to subjectively interpret the rules or make up new rules, which means every interaction relies only on anecdotal evidence from those who have come before. Hopefully that is less true of the back-office reviewers who actually approve the applications. I suspect much the same is true of the PT tax system, so first year taxes as a high-wage remote worker will be exciting.

I don't regret coming, but there are a bunch of things I would have done differently before arrival, knowing what I know now. With the in-process changes here to increase time-to-citizenship to 10 years instead of 5, Spain might have been a good alternative.