I agree. Thatās what I did. I paid my lawyer and my lawyer paid the fee. But I imagine each lawyer might do it differently.
1 Like
In fact, literally anyone can pay on your behalf, your lawyer, partner, family, friend or pet 
as long as they have access to Multibanco payment system (via online banking with a PT bank for example).
What matters is the ācomprovativoā PDF that appears then in your SEF ARI portal, and will be required as part of your documents pack for the biometric appointment.
2 Likes
My timeline:
- Main applicant submission: 02nd Mar, 2023
- Paid on 07 Mar, 2023
- Family application submission: 09 Mar, 2023
- Paid on 13 Mar, 2023
I will not pay much attention to any news/noise about the actual cut off date until the law is approved by the parliament. All we hear and read now are all speculations and people kind of saying what mostly beneficial to themselves. We should give ourselves peace.
11 Likes
So 49 hours have passed since my ARI application was submitted and it is still refusing my payment. Can this be paid in person? I hope they arenāt actually blocking it now.
Did you get your lawyer to pay or did you pay yourself
I tried to pay myself. But after that failed, I sent an email asking my lawyer to try
1 Like
I got my lawyer to pay early March and it went through.
2 Likes
Yes I just talked to my attorney on the phone and she told me people were having issues paying it using their bank app. But they succeeded in person. So I just sent the fee directly to her so she could go pay at the bank
4 Likes
I am about the same in timelineā¦ within a day. Made dependent payments on Friday .
2 Likes
So my lawyer applied on 3/14 and paid on 3/21, but when I log onto ari.sef.pt, it still says awaiting fee payment registration. Did anyone recall how long it takes for the fee payment to show on the SEF site?
@globextrader my own payment status reflected as āSettledā within 48 hours, but my dependentsā took 6 days to show as āSettledā. Just a matter of time before the status updates. My payments were made earlier in March.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but for those applying after Feb 16, 2023 not only do you risk your application being voided, you are in for an extremely long wait. Even if your application is considered by SEF you should note that SEF still has not pre-approved people from December 2021. Which means, you would be lucky to have your applications reviewed two years from now. It could very well be a 9 year process from beginning to end.
Maybe it is still worth taking a chance on things improving. But my opinion is that this is a foolish gambit. I have regrets applying when I did and it was long before this mess.
2 Likes
Yes. Sorry I lost track of the thread . Payments all accepted and process started/confirmed. Somehow the bank missed one payment and I had to redo it but it went through
Not much we can do about timeline ā¦. Oh well. Process started.
1 Like
I think youāre right to remind us of the slow processing times, but there is room for optimism (or really less pessimism).
From Sep 2022 we saw āwavesā of Dec 2021 applications processed (see Awaiting Pre-Approval (Stage 2) - #583 by chetiansunny)
It seems thereās still later Dec 2021 to be approved.
Of course I would assume the HUGE number of applications on Dec 2021 would have been bigger than application received during the first 9 months of 2021.
I think application from Q1 2023 will be the same as Q4 2021, we are all expecting to wait a year for pre-approval.
BUT we do have some benefits, only this year they allowed online renewals for most visas (
See: Portugal Moves Online Applications for Visa Renewals, Including Golden Visas - SchengenVisaInfo.com), which should reduce SEF workload by 70% according to one of the Funds [who is of course biased] (See: The end is near. How to proceed before the closure of the Golden Visa. - YouTube), including GV renewals, so that should allow SEF to focus on the new applications and backlog.
Yes, itāll still suck for new applicantās, but I wouldnāt be surprised if they pre-approve the rest of 2021, all of 2022 and the current 2023 applicants this year.
6 Likes
There were (more or less) no applications accepted in Q1 2022! Here is a thread discussing it: 2022 Application Analysis and Discussion
4 Likes
There seems to be a consensus about the retroactive application of the new law among lawyers and hopefully applications after the 17th of Feb would be considered.
What the Prime Minister is trying to do here is gain the ability to unilaterally terminate programs without the proper legislative approval and then later pass a law to cover the action. Think about the outrage if this was a social service scheme which the Prime Minister didnāt like, and decided to terminate and he could in the future just stop offering the scheme even before any sort of parliamentary approval or discussion. This is a very dangerous precedent for the republic.
2 Likes
Here is a post I put on another form, but may really help those on this forum.
I could not agree more with Nik. I think this forum and a couple of others that are starting are helpful in sharing information that brings us hope, but also educates us and hopefully begins to arm us for a pre-emptive education campaign (my personal goal) that is based in the law of Portugal. I am having to back track from my previous post on the logic of the argument before the Constitutional Court of the Republic to my original analysis of the Portugal GV.
I just went to the main SEF web-site and then went to the ARI section. WOW, what an uplifting read. Because it spells out the entire process for the ARI and what we all should get for our investment from beginning to citizenship and references the applicable acts and diplomas.
I got a question about those that do not have an application number. I am not sure, but I believe in my initial 12+ months ago reading about the amendment that changed where you could buy property (population density and GDP being the two factors) I think the constitutional court stated that the effective date of the law had to be prospective( in the future) not immediate because of the disadvantaging of people already who purchase property, but not submitted. So for those who have applied there is hope. I just need to dig some more on the rulings and principles of the 4 governmental bodies of the Portuguese republic: The President of the Republic, the Government, The Assembly of the Republic and the Constitutional Court. The post Salazar constitutional was intended to create an equal and fair society for all involved with Portugal, not just citizens.
With this being said, all media reports and the people I have talked to in Portugal or connected with companies that have a vested interest in seeing the GV program continue, like Mercan, have said 1) no one in the Government of the Republic ( Prime Minister and Council of Ministers), 2) many if not a majority of the Assembly of the Republic and 3) the President of the Republic do not like the ARI program.
That being the case, it is well documented that the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, is a constitutional lawyer. He has come out publicly and called the Government of the Republicās āMore Housingā law a āPoster Lawā which just highlights and fixates people on the party platform while not solving anything. You all read the news stories. President Rebelo de Sousa from the PSD party, not the PS party of Prime Minister Costa and the majority of the Assembly of the Republic. He has said and so has his predecessor from the PSD party that their job is to attempt to ensure Portugalās place for foreign direct investment.
People are asking why the Prime Minister and current Government of the Republic made up of the Prime Minister and the entire Council of Ministers, et. al. are doing this if it is unconstitutional or plainly illegal.
This is a plan and simple POPULIST move because the Prime Minister and some of his Ministers was about to be ālynchedā by the public for the continued increased cost of housing. His Government is about to publish multiple proposals to amend Acts or create new Acts (answering a question someone else had) for the Assembly of the Republic to read (their first action is to read whatever is sent) of which one of the proposals will contain the ARI changes bundled with something popular the Government wants to pass. The Assembly can potentially vote with 20% of the Assembly to send one or more of the proposals to the Constitutional Court, hash out in the various committees of the Assembly, and then read again before a final vote after which it goes to the President for his review/rejection/punt to the Constitutional Court) as well as at least one decree that will go straight to the President for his his review/rejection/punt to the Constitutional Court). Whenever something is set to the Constituional Court there are time frames on when a ruling must be made between 25 days for things sent from the General Assembly and X days (cannot find it) for things sent from the President.
All of my Portuguese friends tell me this is the way Prime Minister Costa and the Socialists have worked under his leadership for years, but the PSD has not been strong enough or organized enough to unseat him because he plays the populist game and the general population all think he will wave his magic wand and what he wants will come true. Unfortunately for Portugal that was the Salazar authoritian regime so people keep voting Socialist not PSD or one of the other parties.
2 Likes
This is the type of thoughtful analysis that is so helpful and gives hope
One thing you noted in the link you posted that did catch my eye with unusual interest:
The beneficiaries of ARI / Golden Visa are entitled to:
ā¢ Applying for permanent residence (pursuant to the Aliens Act )
ā¢ Applying for Portuguese citizenship,
This type of grant of entitlement will be hard to overturn . I had assumed this was an implied entitlement but instead it is expressly granted which makes it stronger and more clear that removing it acts as a retroactive taking.
Thank you for pointing this out.
The only thing I might question in your post is where you state that no one in the governments likes the GV. Keep in mind that only a year ago It was renewed .
3 Likes
SEF is not only a government agency, but the agency responsible for immigration. If the agency web site promises immigration benefit X, I think thereās a strong case for a Chevron[1]-like presumption that the agencyās interpretation is dispositive.
Letās look at a hypothetical analogy. I buy I-bonds from the Treasury Direct web site, which promise variable yields indexed to the NBER inflation rate, with interest accumulated semi-annually as capital appreciation. I can redeem them at any time, losing 3 months of accumulated interest if redemption occurs within 5 years. Now, we encounter either of two deficiencies:
- Some fatal defect in the I-bond enabling legislation is found to be at odds with the Treasury Direct terms, or
- Congress revokes the I-bond enabling legislation with a lot of huffing and puffing and scapegoating of the greedy rich profiting from othersā misery during a time of high inflation.
So, the government says āYour I-bonds are null and void. Nyuk nyuk. Thanks for the donation!ā
I donāt think that would fly. I think that the terms stated the web site of Treasury Direct (āan official US government web site!ā) would carry great weight in a court trial.
As for SEF and the law and the Constitution, weāll see. I commend the folks on NG and in the RBI community who are diving in, poring over the Constitution and laws, scouring the SEF web site, and figuring all of this out. Lots of good finds so far!