Quick Guide to Immigration, Part One

Someone asked about whether immigration was hard and what it took.

Was it hard? Well, it definitely was a big goal that took planning and persistence. There were stressful times and work, and I’m sure there are still some ahead!

What did it take?

• We’ve been planning the move for 5 years; this was based on a financial incentive at my job. We visited our target country twice before the pandemic, once to look at cities in Portugal, the second to explore Porto more. I would suggest on 12 – 18 months lead time. Perhaps 6 months if you are truly ready to pull the trigger.

• Choosing our country. To those of you new to the blog, we are not a typical family – we are a queer couple. My wife Paula is an out, visible trans woman. She is a bad-ass queer activist and professional. So we limited our research to LGBTQ friendly locations with non-authoritarian governments, because we didn’t want to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. There are cheaper parts of the world than Portugal.

• Understanding the immigration process for your chosen country. Of course, this is going to be different for every country. But in general, you need to complete an application, usually including financial information that shows you can support yourself.

• Submit your application to the embassy to move to the country. Here is an incomplete list of what you might need to do that: FBI report, rental or buyers contract for a place to live, bank account in the new country, notarized application, apostilled drivers license abstract, and financial statements.

• For Portugal, this is a 2-step process. First, obtain a visa which allows you to reside in the country, and during that time, apply for a longer residency (1 – 2 years). For Portugal, the approval or rejection is only supposed to take 4 – 8 weeks… but getting everything ready to submit the application can take a while.

• Move to your chosen country!

At this point, I have to refer to the underwear gnomes of South Park, in which they 1) collect underpants 2) …? 3) profit! Because preparing for the application contains a myriad of complicated steps, which can take a lot of elapsed time and a certain amount of paperwork and errands.

This ignores the question of whether you need to earn money in your target country. That is a whole other level of complication which we are not dealing with.

There is a lot of information on the internet, not all of it accurate. With the pandemic and the rise of anti-democratic leaders out in the world, a lot of people are looking to relocate to another country.