The PT GV used to be a functional programme years ago - hence the attraction. People got their residency cards in a reasonable amount of time (like a year), although now they are having trouble renewing them, or they’ve done 5 years and are now waiting 2+ years in the citizenship application backlog.
Then Covid came along (every service provider’s excuse). And SEF mutated into AIMA. SEF used to publish monthly GV approval stats (remember those, guys?). But AIMA’s never been able to produce anything that detailed since, so I believe the Sept. 2023 SEF GV stats are the latest available. I still see GV promoters quoting those (released in) “October 2023” stats today - I do hope people ask them why the best PT GV stats they have are a year and half old… that tells you something!
But where the approval backlog exploded was when the previous Socialist government allowed anybody with a tourist visa to stay, work for a year, and then apply for residency (Manifestação de Interesse). Now the backlog is in the hundreds of thousands, with us 50,000 or so GV applicants seemingly at the back of the queue. So there’s GV applicants waiting 3+ years here for any sign of life from AIMA.
Some of us sued to get AIMA’s attention, which worked in the early days. Imagine having to sue a government agency just to process your damn paperwork in less than a year (or 2, 3…)! Then the courts got inundated with thousands of AIMA lawsuits and that route basically doesn’t function anymore.
Feeling a bit bad for us hundreds of thousands (MI, CPLP, GV, etc.) waiting for AIMA, the previous government decided to include application waiting time in our years to citizenship (providing that we were eventually approved). However the current government never liked that notion, so it is applied totally randomly by AIMA.
Now the current government is making noises about increasing the years required for PT citizenship from 5 - unclear if that would be to 7, 10, or what. Still early days on this one, but nonetheless not what we signed up for.
…so lots of broken promises, total randomness and senselessness, and of course waiting. GV promoters tend to omit those ugly bits in their sales pitch (as if it was still 5 years ago), or say AIMA’s trying to improve (see: lots of broken promises).
If you have all the patience in the world, don’t mind your substantial investment of money+time+hopes+dreams getting ignored, and perhaps not getting what you signed up for, welcome to the Portugal Golden Visa 