Many people are contacting us to ask when the National Police will resume assigning appointments for fingerprinting or when those who have already been through the fingerprinting process but are waiting for their cards to be issued will be able to pick up their TIE (Foreigner Identity Card).
State of Alarm and the implications to the appointments for fingerprinting and TIE
When the State of Alarm came into force, the system to schedule appointments for fingerprinting was stopped.
Also, the issuance of Foreign Identity Cards (TIE) was suspended for those who had already put their fingerprints but were pending the distribution of the cards.
There were people who already had appointments assigned to give their fingerprints in order to complete the issuance of their Foreign Identity Cards (TIE) and could not do the fingerprinting because said appointments, scheduled during the State of Alarm period, were canceled.
There is also the case of people who had already been fingerprinted and only had to pick up their TIE but they could not go to the corresponding Police Station because during the State of Alarm this service was suppressed.
All the aforementioned situations were reflected in a note released by the National Police that stated:
“Given the situation generated by COVID-19, the health authorities have recommended that preventive measures be taken to avoid contagion and protect the health of citizens. For this reason, Immigration Appointments to obtain Foreigner Identity Cards (TIE) are suppressed. This service will resume when there is a significant improvement in sanitary conditions. All appointments already booked are canceled, and the citizen must book an appointment again once the service is restored. In the Documentation Units, expeditions will continue to be attended to in special situations that may arise.
Alternatives to the procedure
Meanwhile, during the State of Alarm, many foreigners have been able to continue submitting immigration procedures electronically (initial procedures, renewals, permit modifications, and long-term/permanent residence card applications).
Many of these people have already been granted their initial, renewed, or modified permits, their Long Term Permits, and their Permanent Cards.
And now we are faced with a real blockage because, in addition to the people who had assigned appointments for fingerprinting or those who had favorable resolutions and did not yet have appointments for fingerprinting, we add the group mentioned in the previous paragraph who have a favorable resolution but are unable to be fingerprinted by the police for the issuance of their Foreigner Identity Card (TIE). Also, we already know that between the fingerprinting and the issuance of the plastic card it takes about 20 days on average.
So, what to expect in the short term?
The problem that we are encountering recurringly and that is more common than we can imagine is that many people will not even reach the possibility of having a TIE and will then have to renew or modify their permits simply with a favorable resolution for a simple reason: the Police only allows us to give our fingerprints for the preparation of the TIE, that is, the plastic card, if we have more than six months of residence or stay ahead of the issued resolution since TIEs are NOT issued if the time we have left is less than six months.
For this reason, we say that given the system’s collapse we are going to encounter and the difficulty of finding an appointment when the service restarts, it is most likely that many people will simply identify with the resolution and not even have their TIE to be documented with. By the way, if you find yourself in this situation, you should not worry, since the resolution is equally valid.
When will the police restart the appointments for fingerprinting?
This is the million-dollar question, the one that we all ask. But here we have a problem and it is that before the State of Alarm came into force, finding a fingerprint appointment was like finding a needle in a haystack, and because of that some unscrupulous people even went so far as to sell these appointments when they are totally free. So if before the State of Alarm there was already an overload, we do not even want to imagine what will happen when the appointment system is restored.
Most likely, the police will not call those applicants who already had appointments that were canceled during the State of Alarm to reassign their new appointments, but rather everyone will most likely have to find a new appointment.
And when will the appointment system open?
Well, according to the Ministry of the Interior, the service could be restarted on May 25th.
The problem is that we will have to see how the de-escalation stages continue because we fear that the opening phases will not be the same in all the cities of Spain.
What does seem to happen is that the first week will be used solely for the delivery of the TIEs that were already in the process of being issued when the COVID-19 crisis broke out.
Subsequently, the Ministry of Interior will begin to make appointments to issue new cards.
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