I expect the MI (manifestação de interesse) route will be severely clamped down in today’s announcement.
I have praised Portugal’s liberal Ellis Island policies in the recent past, but there’s no denying that the state’s capacity to absorb people at the rate they’re coming in is under strain, as a 400,000 case logjam would indicate. State capacity is not just processing permits on time but ensuring that all other services like healthcare, law enforcement, justice, social security, education, housing scale as well. Otherwise this will become another place where immigrants are blamed for everything.
Starting 2017, one could get into the MI queue by showing up in Portugal from anywhere, not just Portuguese-speaking countries, legally or otherwise, holding down a minimum wage job and paying taxes for 12 months. At this price (and given the prize of an EU passport at the end of the tunnel) the demand is very high.
Neither in geographic size, economic size or unexploited potential is Portugal anything close to early-1900s USA to absorb (effectively) open immigration, not to mention pressure from the rest of the EU. Portuguese immigration policy will recalibrate to this reality sooner or later.