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by user_named 1255 days ago
Takes 18 months to get permission for your foreign spouse to move to Sweden. It then takes 12-18 months to get into the social system - you register quickly, but for the bureaucracy to actually add you into the system takes that long. So no, you're wrong. Portugal is not different.
3 comments

It's not really the delays that make Portugal different, arguably most countries have long delays, it's the lack of reliability, transparency, and responsiveness.

I don't know Sweden. But we're a family of expats with multiple citizenships, so I deal with bureaucracy in 4 countries on 3 continents. Most countries have streamlined procedures, provide tracking numbers, addresses to send things in, phone lines... So it's long, but you know what's going on and what to do.

Here, even lawyers don't even know what to do. For a similar situation to get my partner a visa from within the country, we simply couldn't speak to anyone. Even the lawyer told us "well, you might have to wait a year or two to see if they re-open their ability to take new appointments." We eventually were able to get through after hustling like crazy, me driving to many different city halls to speak to officials there. Someone eventually knew a colleague there, and got us an appointment for 6 months later in a city 3 hours drive away. We showed up, it was a butcher. Their Google Maps pin was not even in the right place. Cherry on the cake. After getting turn-by-turn instructions from the butcher (who apparently does that 10 times a day), we eventually found their office.

Idk, never been to Sweden but I don't think you can compete with that :-D

Now I get it, they're vastly understaffed, Portugal is a small country. They're doing what they can.

You don't understand. It's not about Sweden, Germany, Portugal. As an expat you always deal with this. Indians waiting for green card lottery and then another 100 years? But I'm sure you will come up with a reason why that's different. You need to take a step back and become aware of yourself.
Public offices love to slap fines for being late on people. I think people should be entitled to the same fees if the offices are late.
That was not our experience 8 years ago, it was much faster.