I’ve been thinking about the Portuguese Golden Visa program for a few months and talked with a lawyer but I feel overwhelmed and over my head about what I might properly expect.
My primary goal is to get my elementary-school-aged child a Plan B, in case things in the States continue in their current direction, but I feel confused about how that could work for my kid. (It would be fine to have just residency for a long time, and there’s not a big hurry about the passports because we don’t want to go anywhere fast right now. But I’m concerned that if the citizenship process takes more than 7 years, then is he an adult and not connected to my residence visa any more?). Is the Portuguese GV a viable route for an eleven-year-old in 2025 in your opinion? If not, what would you do instead?
Also, for those of you who are invested, how did you choose your investments? I have only ever invested in real estate and don’t know how to properly vet things I can’t, like, walk around in with a hammer.
Thanks so much for your advice and expertise. (Please be gentle with me though if these questions are dumb or obvious, I find this situation so stressful it sort of blanks out my brain.)
Under current law, if he’s accrued the necessary 5 years residence time himself and passed the A2 language test then after turning 18 he can apply to naturalize.
No idea what changes will happen before he gets to that point though. Maybe they’ll require 10 years residence, B2 Portuguese, and residing majority of the time in Portugal.
Thanks, Anonymous. But to clarify: even if they change the goalposts, we’d all have Portuguese residence visas at that point, so if he had to live there for ten years and be fluent, the option to live there would still be open to him?
Please look up the most recent thread here, a lot of options other than PT GV are laid out with some rationale:
My personal opinion based on first-hand experience:
PT GV is great for many reasons, but too risky to be relied upon as a sole ‘Plan B’;
one should seriously consider pursuing a ‘Plan C’ in parallel to your main ‘Plan B’ which could well be PT GV if you are so inclined (or rather I’d call them multiple ‘Plan Bs’);
good news is that some of the alternatives cost incomparably much less than PT GV as are not even positioned as CBI/RBI programs (i.e. no investment is required at all to obtain residence, with no physical stay required either).
