I imagine the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras — or SEF for short– the government unit responsible for processing and approving visas — as a typical office. Typical people sit in a small warren of cubes decorated with mandated posters, plants, and personal items. The smell of really good coffee and a variety of pastries fills the air except between 1pm and 3pm when the office closes, except for João who was hired last. (João is theoretically available to answer the phone and accept packages. I say theoretically because with no one watching, he also takes a long midday break. He just doesn’t leave the office like their co-workers do.)
Every day they open a pouch of preprocessed manila envelopes that arrives, each filled with the paperwork requesting visas submitted by (for the purposes of my dream, at least) hopeful Americans. João now has the chore of opening those pouches and sorting the envelopes. In practice the paperwork is simply piled in an available cube, although care is usually taken to keep the ones marked as being family units or married together, and to put the newer paperwork at the back of the cube. The paperwork is picked up by workers as they have time and availability. Some take only one (or, one family unit) at a time; others take several because they don’t like to leave their desk to walk to the cube.
Since the paperwork has already been vetted by VFS, (we’ve shared thoughts on this part of the process already), most of the requests are in good order, making their task one of verification and double-checking. SEF workers are proud of their country and fiercely protective about who they allow to reside here. Discovering an error is a cause for much discussion and story-telling of previously made errors and their discovery. Horror stories are rare, but loom large in everyone’s memory. Translations of the personal statements often produce unintentionally hilarious assertions. Some dreams shared in those statements are met with cynical head-shaking. All are read with care and attention; every detail verified to the best of the caseworkers’ ability.
Most requests are approved within the 60 to 90 day window (un)officially set by SEF administrators, although holiday times, strikes, politics, the weather, and personal issues contract and expand that window greatly. Requests from individuals for updated time frames are sent one of three politely worded templates, chosen at random and translated into the inquiring language by a program written a few years ago by the child of a former supervisor. (The employee in question has since retired and no one has checked the translation since it was installed. Some errors in syntax and word choice remain unverified; frequently provoking a sense of unreality in receivers.)
When approved, the paperwork is placed in a secure location where a colleague collects it, makes sure all check listed items are verified, and then hands it off, back to our friend João, for finalization. This is the tedious part of the process, involving the printing and gluing of the actual visa into a page of the passport (presuming it was included) after the scheduling of the all-important residency appointment. This appointment gives SEF a last chance to verify the fitness of the person applying for residency. Choosing an appointment time and place has been made exceptionally easy. João opens a scheduling window and is told the next available time and location approximately 90 days after the scheduled date of arrival. The chosen time/ place is added to the visa , which is then printed and added to the passport. Sometimes a new intern prints the visa before making the appointment, which provokes great consternation and shaking of heads. The appointment is still scheduled, as SEF workers know that the information as to how to find one’s appointment is easily available on their website.
Finally João places the completed paperwork into its own mailer, affixes its designated FedEx mailing label (printed by VFS and included in the original packet), and sets it aside for mailing. Granted, I know absolutely none of this to be true, but it the best theory my dreams have come up with that fit the facts as we know them. John and I are about a month out from our SEF appointments and so I’m understandably concerned with it.
