Citizenship processing delays

Residencies & citizenships Portugal Golden Visa
,
405

In my opinion today and tomorrow are the critical days, if we still see no clear progress of progressing files from November and December 2023, then I would start questioning the real intention and perhaps people should be thinking about legal actions on this matter as well. As this Wednesday, there is a general strike, Thursday is an official holiday and next week IRN workers are going on another strike, if nothing happens this week then it will be mid June.

The facts are;

  • The new nationality law clearly has a grandfathering clause for the pending applications
  • The first Oct 2023 case (that I can see from public sources) has been approved, Dec 2025 last year, 6+ months have passed and still approval of the next month has not started.
  • Even if you take the official submission date as the starting date, the cases have passed the 29 months limit and in fact almost closing 31 months. By the way the real processing time is longer, e.g. I’ve applied September and in the system the submission date appears November, as that was the day when I received the codigo. The actual day 1 should be counted from when someone makes the application, not from an in arbitrary internal step. Just because online applications were not assigned a codigo for 5-6 months, this should not mean that time should not be counted towards processing deadline
  • For my specific case, I know that everything is completed including AIMA’s feedback. I know this from my lawyers who have taken this info from IRN; and it is waiting for the final sign-off for IRNs. I really don’t know what’s keeping the final sign-off given that there is now no ambiguity or question about the pending cases - especially for the 2023 cases as a whole given that we are now in mid-2026.

The argument of “ohh they are clearing the backlog” also doesn’t seem to be the case, as we still see sporadic approvals from March-April and the overall pace is still slow. If you compare the current pace of approvals prior to the nationality law discussion, you clearly see how the approval pace is way different. In my opinion it all comes to the intention; however given that the law is out there with a clear grandfathering clause for pending applications, there should not be any excuses for delaying approvals for pending cases.

406

May I ask, what are your timelines from the start?

407

It took 4 years 3 months for my dependents to complete their first biometric and then they received their first resident cards 3 months later which is 4.5 years in total after the submission of application. Therefore, if just giving a biometric takes that long, who knows how much time Portugal needs to process the citizenship’s application.

In addition to that, from what I can see there are many many applications from April/May 2023 in IRN Porto sleeping in step 1 2 or 3. The expected time in IRN Porto probably is “at least” 3.5-4 years now. The worst thing is that there is no sign of improvement in the future.

1 Like
408

One thing which is worth to note is that all online citizenship’s applications (including the surge at the last minute submit before law changed) are assigned to IRN Lisbon or Porto while other IRNs only take applications in person (which is not affected by limiting 5/10/20 persons/day/IRN) or by mail (which is also not affected when law changed because people used lawyers to insert applications online). Therefore these two IRNs Lisbon & Porto will be under huge pressure to reduce the backlogs and it is unlikely that backlogs will be solved. For those who already applied online via lawyers, I think it is worth to understand that it might take 4 years or even more to receive the citizenship’s outcome.

409

Yeah, no wonder there has been no movement since the October 2023 cases, which were still being analyzed seven months ago.

410

For AIMA, our case was first considered by Porto (that’s where the biometrics were taken). Later we found out that the blockage had occurred when they were sent to Ponta Delgada, which disagreed with the Porto’s office decision to shift us out of ARI into the D category. Is there any chance that the IRN will start redistributing the packages? Leiria and Pombal are literally years faster.

1 Like
411

How did you find out about the transfer, when you check online which office is shown as the assigned office?

412

I wonder if there was a disagreement between two offices, it literally means that the Aima Porto must have already analized your case. If they already did it, then why was your case forwarded to Aima Ponta Delgada?
:shaking_face:

413

IMO this is one of the few winnable legal issues when it comes to IRN - and the simplest.

Every time you write to IRN their response inevitably includes prominent reference to Art 266(2) of the Constitution, along with the inference that you’re asking for special treatment:
Administrative organs and agents are subject to the Constitution and the law, and in the exercise of their functions must act with respect for the principles of equality, proportionality, justice, impartiality and good faith.

The things is that instead of treating ALL Art 6.1 applications as a class, they create the class out of the Art 6.1 applications randomly made/allocated to specific IRNs. So you have the right to be treated the same as all others at Porto or Lisboa, but can’t demand the same processing times as Art 6.1’s that randomly lucked into eg Braga or Espinho or wherever is most efficient in that moment. The difference can be up to 2 years. It is an irrational process that results in patently unequal outcomes and leaves each of us hostage to the vagaries of individual IRN offices.

414

…it’s all part of the Portugal “Gold plated” Visa experience :star:

3 Likes
415

True. But so long as not turned down no one one will, or should, rock the boat!

417

I know the situation is dire, if we could all share this petition to parliament, it might actually do something.

It’s not just an inconvenience at this point, it’s a violation of our rights everyone here knows how frustrating this is.

The petition is a direct demand to the Portuguese Parliament to finally step in, enforce the law, and hold the IRN accountable - we don’t have any other concrete tool to force a change.

It takes 30 seconds to sign. If each of us sends this link to just five friends or family members, the impact multiplies instantly, and we can push this over the threshold where parliament has to listen.

Please, don’t just scroll past this. Click the link, add your name, and then forward it to everyone you know who is (or ISNT) also caught in this nightmare. Let’s make some noise together. :portugal:

https://participacao.parlamento.pt/initiatives/4867

4 Likes
418

Btw this petition forces Parliament to make the IRN actually respect the 90-day legal deadline for nationality decisions. It calls for penalties when deadlines are repeatedly broken, and structural reforms to stop the 3+ year waiting times.*

3 Likes
419

I appreciate the motivation behind this petition. I would very much like to see naturalization applications expedited, because I am waiting myself.

I am declining to sign this petition because of meaningful concerns with the wording and framing. This petition blames IRN for willfully failing to perform its duties in a timely manner. I have interacted with IRN employees several times, and that explanation does not align with my experiences. What I’m seeing is that the government chooses not to staff IRN adequately. Newspaper articles document the fact that the pace of IRN staff attrition greatly exceeds the pace of hiring and training. It comes as no big surprise that a right-wing government with an anti-migrant platform would slow-walk the processing of naturalization applications.

Let’s see a petition calling on the government—particularly the relevant minister—to greatly increase the IRN budget, accelerate hiring and training, improve working conditions, upgrade technology, and generally empower IRN to clear this backlog without undue delay. Punishing IRN for delays is blaming a fellow victim.

5 Likes
420

I agree that the IRN is severely underfunded and understaffed. If there were another active petition focusing explicitly on boosting the IRN’s budget and accelerating hiring, I would happily sign it alongside this one.

The main reason people are backing this specific initiative is pragmatism, it’s the one currently gaining the most traction, and right now, it feels like the only realistic way to get any form of spotlight on this issue in Parliament. I also think it’s a mistake to view an institution like the IRN as a person or a fellow “victim”—penalties targeting the organisation wouldn’t hurt the frontline staff, but they would force management’s hand to optimize processes and make decisions faster.

That said, while I do sympathise with the workload of frontline staff, I find it incredibly difficult to understand why the system is still largely at a standstill with 2023 applications. In my view, institutional modernisation and operational development ultimately have to be the IRN’s responsibility as an organization. The government shouldn’t constantly need to step in to force basic development or manage internal efficiency.

Look at Finanças and Segurança Social: they take internal ownership of their operational development, build integrated digital ecosystems (like the Portal das Finanças and Segurança Social Direta) to automate complex, high-volume systems without needing the government to hold their hand. Both of those organisations serve the entire Portuguese population, whereas the IRN handles a fraction of that volume, yet is sitting on a backlog of almost three years…

Funding is absolutely a massive piece of the puzzle, but there also needs to be structural accountability from the top down to finally break this deadlock.

3 Likes
421

We are in agreement about accountability from the top down. The top person is a government minister, a politician, whose party and coalition campaigned on ethnonationalism, expulsion of migrants, and prolonging the path to citizenship.

Do you think a front-line supervisor at Comcast can move the needle on customer service if the VP of customer relations doesn’t want to? With no budget, no staffing, no funding, and an explicit stop-work order from the top?

Portugal handed out residence cards virtually overnight to all migrants from Ukraine, literally “no questions asked”, and proudly posted press releases and newspaper articles about going the extra mile for immediate results. ARI applicants who dotted all their i’s and crossed all their t’s are still waiting for cards after five years. Is it more likely that these contrasting outcomes were based on uncoordinated individual preferences of front-line workers and mid-level managers at AIMA, or because of the explicit political directive that Leitão Amaro literally boasted about on the floor of parliament?

The government is well aware of the naturalization backlog. If the government decides to resume clearing the naturalization queue, progress will resume. Funding will be allocated, staffing will be hired, green lights will be given. Until then, it will crawl at a snail’s pace, because that’s what the government told IRN to do. Blaming IRN worker bees is a gift to the government, shifting responsibility away from the responsible party and yes, blaming the victim.

Do you think IRN staff enjoy being told not to do their jobs? I’ve interacted with a number of IRN employees. Every one was among the most helpful and sympathetic government employees I’ve encountered in Portugal. I get real help from IRN employees the first time, every time. At Finanças I wait in line from 6 AM every day, several days in a row, visiting different offices, venue shopping until I have the good fortune to find someone willing to be helpful.

I’m 100%, “bet my life” confident that those kind, helpful IRN employees aren’t slow-walking my application because of intrinsic laziness, disorganization, and lack of motivation. Lack of investment in efficiency, organization, and throughput is a political decision from the top, and that’s where the bullhorn should be directed.

1 Like
422

It may not be a black or white situation and below is what I think

  • There is a clear reluctance to finalize even the pending cases that are protected by the new law. Whenever there is an “excuse” to pause processing, e.g. debates at parliament, constitutional court’s ruling, processing newer months have been paused, and during those times, mostly cases with falta (missing documents) were completed.
  • If this was simply a result of IRN being understaffed, I would still expect to a slower progress, perhaps a much slower, but still a progress of approvals of newer months - so instead of moving to a new batch (month) every month, we could perhaps see moving to a new batch (month), let’s say every 3 months. Whereas now, there is a complete standstill.

Given that the new law has been finally published and now has been in force for almost 2 weeks,

  • IRNs might be trying to make a point, and my be trying to convey that "if you don’t provide us decent staff, we won’t move on to new months and we just keep approving ad-hoc cases with falta so that we seem to be working. In reality they would have effectively frozen the approvals after a certain date and this might be their way of pressurizing the government to do what they want
  • There might be an informal guidance to lengthen the approval processes so that the pending applications take closer to 10 years. Still if this was the case, I would expect to see November cases finally getting approved to take out of the steam in the boiler.

Now just to give you bit more clarity I am a Nov case and my lawyers were told that all approvals (including the one from AIMA) are in place since March. So basically at least for March, my case has been waiting the final sign-off. When they checked my case in late March, they were told that I should be getting my final approval somewhere around May or June.

I thought this was synched perfectly with the new nationality law getting officialized. Now that the law has been officialized and there has been no progress for the past 10 days I wonder whether it is the IRNs that are actually trying to tell the government, “if you make us work understaffed, nothing really progress”

In my opinion, the lawyers in Portugal might be knowing more about what’s really going but they may not be sharing everything they know due to various reasons. e.g. not to put themselves in a complicated situation, they won’t be able to communicate informal info etc

However given that the new law has been promulgated by president by mid May and has been in force for almost two weeks, in a country of rule of law, we should be seeing progressing of the pending cases from newer months - as delay is now looking like an arbitrary despite the new nationality law clearly grandfathering the pending cases.

2 Likes
423

Given that AIMA is going out on strike for a week because of the government’s labor agenda, it isn’t a stretch to speculate that IRN is also demoralized. Work slowdowns are a tried-and-true technique from the labor activism playbook.

I don’t have any proof but I suspect that the word was passed down from the top that residency-based naturalization should be slowed to a crawl until further notice, and further notice hasn’t arrived yet. If the author of that policy is smart, it isn’t written down anywhere.

Are overworked, underpaid, under-resourced, unappreciated workers likely to exceed expectations even though upper management / political leadership doesn’t value their work and doesn’t invest in their success? Strangely enough, sometimes they do, but it would be unexpected for staff to defy leadership in this case.

Remember when Leitão Amaro gloated about putting ARIs at the back of the line and keeping them there for “social equity”? I expect that a lot of very-low-priority work is going to get done before naturalization processes resume at full speed. Say, maybe we can get all of the IRN naturalization unit staff to digitalize all of the old paper vehicle and predial registration files from the 1940s to 1990s, using very slow flatbed scanners, and put them back to work on citizenship stuff in 2033.

424

Now some people question whether they are waiting for regulations to be circulated. One can ask what the regulations have to do with pending cases..

There was this ongoing debate about - regulations of expression of interest never really been circulated - if they circulate the new regulations, perhaps they are planning to turn down applications which leverage expression of interest route..

I can’t really comment on this, I’m sure there are people out there who knows what’s happening and why is there an arbitrary pause; but one thing is certain. If by mid next week, we still don’t see any November applications getting approved in Porto, then this means that there is a deliberate holding off. By then a month will have passed, in the old days, in almost every week there will be new approvals. Since last December there is no real progress.

There is no point of trying to normalize this unless someone has another agenda…

1 Like
425

But afaik they started counting the dates from application for all types of applications, not only expression of interest, from march 24. why would they stop the pending cases before that?