ā¦so like this, conveniently announced on the first official day of the election campaign?
Very convenient indeedāfighting for those sweet sweet votes from Chega supporters. PSD has been in government for an entire year and has done nada in the anti-immigration-fraud department.
Thereās not much to be done in the law and order department I donāt think because for the most part Portugal is incredibly safe
What they really need is courts that arenāt uselessly slow for private disputes and stuff but nobody seems to be talking about that
1 Like
I am in the very eary research phase for the Golden visa in Portugal and this thread is illuminating.
Personally I am just looking in an invest / forget type of visa that leads to EU citizenship. Donāt really care if from application to passport it took 8-10 years.
But I do care if things get reversed mid way. Still not sure where to go with this.
Well, PSD stopped the wave on immigrants entering on tourist visa, submitting manifestaĆ§Ć£o sometimes even with blank sheets instead of documents and starting count of there time for citizenship. If PSD presents it well, many portugueses will not consider it as nothing. It is a game changer. It at least stops the growth of the problem. Portugal is just unable process at the moment all residence applications and renewals and requests for the citizenship.
Fraud in applications is a more difficult issue, taking into account what mess was left by previous government, they are not even close to solve such issues.
As for the crime, Portugal become a bit less safe recently, but it is still is much safer than most US cities as well as countries like France.
1 Like
Well, many countries have history/culture tests, however I do not think that Portugal will be able to introduce them fast. They allow all this language courses, most of which gives the certificate just for sitting 150 hours with knowledge significantly worse that required for passing the exam, because they could not administer so many exams. If they want history knowledge, in the worst case scenario it will likely go similar way - some 50 hours courses will be accepted instead of exams. But even this is questionable.
Listen, Portugal changed some rules of driving 8 years ago (mostly points system for rule violations). So far, they have managed to eliminate outdated questions but did not create and add new questions on those issues. We are here talking about elaborating completely new sphere - how to test history/culture knowledge. I doubt it. However, there are some unreasonable parties which do not care about new law consequences, but not PSD
Feels like she āgets it.ā Any way to leverage this, other than sending her a message saying āAmen to that?ā
Lurdes Gramaxo has just been re-elected for another three years as head of Investors Portugal. She leads an association that brings together around 30 venture capital managers and directly or indirectly represents more than 300 business angels in Portugal, who together have around 6 billion euros in assets under management.
ā¦
The word Golden Visa has a level of toxicity that perhaps does not encourage it.
Exactly, exactly. And this is the problem: sometimes hasty decisions are made just because of public opinion, just because the instruments cannot actually be explained.
We lack private capital in this ecosystem. Now, we need to have much less bureaucratic processes, much less difficult to implement these instruments. Even today, you can invest in venture capital and obtain a Golden Visa, but it takes two years to be called for an interview with AIMA. It doesnāt make sense, people give up.Have you had any complaints?
Some funds that had this Golden Visa instrument had a lot of difficulty. First, because the loss of reputation is very significant. People were afraid, because after all, things change and Iām halfway through and then I canāt get [the visa]. And the bureaucracy of the process also made it very difficult.
2 Likes
What if it takes 13-15 years? When your waiting period (currently 5 years, but may be extended to 10 years depending on political developments) ends, you are only entitled to apply for citizenship, which is currently taking an additional 3 years to process.
However, your application would come after an enormous boom of applicants that are currently ahead of you in the process, so the citizenship processing times are likely to get worse before they get better.
The biggest concern I have with all the politicians talking about upping the time for citizenship, is I have read (cant remember where) they want to only give citizenship when people actually physically reside here, which would mean that the GV becomes somewhat less attractive to many people. Currently itās only based on the time you have had your residency card.
I heard the same thing from my lawyer today about both PR and citizenship that it only starts when the first card is issued, not initial application acceptance. Itās a bummer since if itās from the initial acceptance, Iād be looking at next year instead of 2028. At this point iām resigned to just hoping my familyās process goes through as quickly as possible for the rules change again. Itās not a full pass fail for how our GV process goes, but between hoping the GV investment makes money, PR is established, and citizenship is gained; weāre looking at varying degrees of success.
1 Like
Your lawyer is saying the change to count citizenship from application is already reversed? The law has been changed back already?
1 Like
Thats what she implied, but maybe there was a miscommunication.
I was talking about a different thing, where citizenship application is not based on the number of days you phyiscall stay in Portugal, but the number of days you have had the ability to be a resident. Whether that means from the day you got your residence card, the day that you applied at your embassy, or the day you did your first AIMA appointment is still not clear. We will probably hear about this as people from GV apply for citizenship from the date they first applied.
1 Like
Damn that sucks. There was no official ruling on this rollback?
One of the reasons this is all so murky now is that, under Portuguese law, SEF (now AIMA) was obligated to process residence permit applications within 90 days (yeah, right ā¦). Iām not sure they ever consistently met that deadline, and during COVID as everyone knows the situation got significantly worse, blowing out to over a year, sometimes several. So while politicians might now argue that residency only begins once you physically receive your card, disgruntled applicants have successfully countered in court that SEF or AIMA failed to meet their own statutory deadlines for issuing those cards (those cases were to force a decision on applications, nothing to do with citizenship requirements, but it is a useful benchmark).
2 Likes