The FBI check for a D7 is good for 90 days. Consulate appointments run two to three months out. Order in the wrong order and the certificate is dead before you reach the counter. We build the sequence backward from your appointment date.
This is the whole reason the D7 document chain fails, and it is a sequencing problem rather than a paperwork problem.
San Francisco advises three months of lead time for national visas. Washington DC advises two months. New York publishes four to eight weeks, extendable to sixty days. On top of that sits a sixty day statutory decision period.
So the appointment queue is routinely longer than the life of the document you need to bring to it. Order the FBI check first, which is what almost everyone does unprompted, and you arrive with an expired certificate and start over.
Sources: Portugal consular checklists dated 06.11.2025 published via VFS Global, consulate processing pages for San Francisco, Washington DC and New York, and vistos.mne.gov.pt statutory deadlines. Verified July 27, 2026.
Nineteen line items across two stages. Four of them are documents we produce. The rest are yours, and most need no authentication at all.
The single most common failure in this corridor. Book first, count backward, then order. Everything else on this list is rarer than this one.
The FBI check is federal and takes a US Department of State apostille. A Secretary of State apostille on it is void. Your family's birth and marriage certificates are the opposite case and take a state apostille from the issuing state. A family file runs both channels at once.
Older checklists let the police certificate arrive apostilled or unopened in its original sealed envelope. The revision dated 06.11.2025 deleted that alternative. Apostille is now mandatory with no fallback, and any guide still offering the envelope route is out of date.
Portugal's official label for the remote work visa is D9. D8 officially means accompanying a family member. Writing D8 on a form risks routing the file to the wrong queue. If you are working remotely rather than living on passive income, the D7 is the wrong visa for you.
The D7 asks for a balance sitting in an account. The D9 asks for a three month earnings history. They are structurally different tests and the numbers do not transfer.
Under Portuguese law the only certifiers with standing are a Portuguese notary, a conservador, a lawyer practising in Portugal, a recognised chamber of commerce, or a Portuguese consulate. A US notary is not among them, so the standard American certified translation with a notarised affidavit has no legal standing here.
The old AIMA criminal record consent form was legally revoked in January 2024, yet orphaned copies are still downloadable from official sites citing the repealed article. It appears on no current checklist. If a post asks for it, sign it, and do not pay to notarise it.
We start from your VFS or consular appointment date and work backward, allowing for FBI issuance plus federal apostille turnaround, targeting arrival with two to four weeks of margin inside the 90 days.
Through an approved channeler, results as fast as 30 minutes. Ordered on the schedule, not on the day you call us.
Hand carried into the US Department of State in Washington DC. 7 to 10 business days against five to twelve weeks by mail, which is what makes the 90 day window survivable.
Certified copies of your marriage certificate and your children's birth certificates, apostilled by the state that issued them. Several states need county or registrar certification before the Secretary of State will apostille, and we handle that step.
Build your accommodation and insurance evidence to survive reuse. AIMA asks for the same things again at stage two.
The D7 threshold is pegged to the Portuguese minimum wage, which rose to 920 EUR for 2026. Anything you read quoting 870 EUR is last year's number.
Bringing family? Marriage certificates and children's birth certificates are issued by a state or by Washington DC, and they are apostilled by whoever issued them. We handle the Washington DC ones at $175 for the first record and $125 for each additional. A record from another state has to go to that state.
Check what you want us to handle. The order form opens with it already set up, and it collects everything we need from you up front: documents, scans, and details. No calls needed.
You cannot choose your post, and the filing route is not the same everywhere. Newark says so plainly: if you do not live in one of its three states, you may not apply there.
Washington DC, with centres in DC, Houston and Miami. New York. San Francisco.
VFS accepts documents, takes biometrics and collects fees. It does not decide anything. Its paid extras buy no priority.
Newark, which requires an in person interview and opens appointments on the last Friday of each month after 2 pm. Boston. New Bedford.
Providence does not process visa applications at all. Massachusetts is split between Boston and New Bedford by city and county rather than by state.
If you live in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada or New Mexico, confirm your post before ordering anything. The official jurisdiction table appears to be truncated and leaves those eight states unassigned. We check this at intake.
If a document we produced is rejected for a reason that is ours, we redo it at our cost and move it to the front of the queue. That covers the FBI check, the apostille, and the sequencing we built.
We cannot cover a rejection driven by evidence you supplied, by a missed appointment, or by a consulate revising its published requirements after your file was built. This corridor changes often: the current checklists are dated November 2025 and the ministry revises them on no fixed cycle. We re-verify it quarterly.
Requirements last verified against official sources on July 27, 2026.
Tell us your appointment date, or that you are still waiting on one. We will not order a single document until the timing works, because that is the part that actually decides whether your file survives.