Hi Everyone! I am new this platform. I grew up speaking Portuguese with my grandparents as a kid, but never “formally” learned the language. Also, my grandparents were Azorean and I’ve realized that the Azorean accent and dialect and quite different than a lot of the European Portuguese that is spoken elsewhere.
I’m applying for citizenship through descent (my grandmother was born in Portugal). I’m taking the CIPLE exam in May in the Azores.
I would like to move to Portugal–I’m a US citizen and live in the states. The Portuguese consulate in my city informed me that once I complete my citizenship application, I can’t even reach out to inquire about the status for 1-2 years! Does anyone have experience with this? I was really hoping to move to Portugal before then but believe I only qualify for a short-term visa and that wouldn’t allow me to work.
The consulate won’t offer me much information and told me that I should hire an immigration attorney. I’d like to avoid that if possible. If anyone has any insights to share, I would really appreciate it!
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Hey,
I find Azorean Portuguese difficult to understand. On PP I’ve learned all the words nice and separately, and in the Azores they tend to chop the ends of words off and smash them together. I’m slowly starting to understand more though. Which island/s were your Grandparents from?
I saw a clip of Victor Rui Dores recently doing impressions of all the accents from the islands. Worth checking out.
I’m not an expert on this stuff, but this is relating to my experience:
Citizenship - I applied in July 2023, but I’m applying for citizenship through marriage (I think it’s quicker for people applying via descent).
Six months after submitting it I got a letter to say I had to call to get a code to find out my status. Long story short it took me 6 months to get it and my application was still at stage one (so after a year of submitting it, it was at stage one which is them just saying they’ve received it). Recently I checked and it looks like they’re looking at it, but I’m not sure. It’s very vague. I think they hired a lot of people to try to get through the backlog. There used to be six stages, but they recently updated it to be four stages. 
I moved and then applied for residency (I’m non-EU), but I’m not sure how easy it is to obtain in general. My husband and kids have Portuguese citizenship, so I got it on the grounds of ‘family reconciliation’. So you should look at if you’d be able to get residency. Have you looked on Facebook? I imagine there must be groups with lots of people talking about this stuff, as I read yesterday that a lot of North-Americans are moving to Portugal.
Hope this helps!
There are many visas you can apply for to live in Portugal, D7, D8, D6, look for into on the Portuguese Consulate website. Citizenship is not the only way to live here. I am a temporary resident for almost 4 years now, and will continue to renew my temporary residence. I’ve met many Americans who live here and work remotely for US companies as freelancers.
You should apply for citizenship since you can, but you can live there while you wait.
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Thank you for sharing–that sounds frustrating, but hopefully things will move quickly for you!
My grandparents were both from Sao Miguel. I grew up in an area where all the Portuguese people were from the Azores so I thought Azorean Portuguese, was real Portuguese. Not to mention that my grandparents used to make up words that were part Portuguese, part English.
Thanks for replying.
Unfortunately I don’t qualify for any of those options currently, but I’m trying to find a remote job so I can apply for a D8 while I wait for citizenship.