Actually, in many cases the courts have sided with the applicants. However, even after winning the case, AIMA is still dragging its feet. What you have on your hand is a case of completely dysfunctional agency which is hopelessly overwhelmed by the backlog and simply canāt cope with the work load. The State is trying to intervene and streamline the processing, in both good and bad manner, but so far nothing is really working. And so, brace yourself for a long ride - a very very very long ride.
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Technically that is correct, but considering that the government has just reduced the waiting period from 6 to 5 years and permitted (though not fully explained in writing) the start day of waiting period from the first card issue to the application filing date, it would be a bit of an uphill battle for them to increase the wait period to 10 years overnight on those who already applied for residency. I would agree that the risk is there and it is a real one, but at this stage I would read it more like a desperate cry by an agency (i.e. AIMA) that simply canāt cope with the huge backlog. Of course, curbing immigration in any way possible is always a typical popular cry in just about any country during election times, including the U.S., U.K., and most of EU to name a few.
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But the first order effect of longer citizenship times would be more work for AIMA: citizens donāt have to renew residence cards, but people waiting to become citizens do.
The second order effect might be to make people choose somewhere more immigrant friendly (eg Germany recently reduced their time from 8 to 5 years, and has much better jobs than Portugal!) which I guess would reduce pressure on AIMA.
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Agreed, though I would not place too much stake on other EU countries āreducingā their wait time: it is one thing to put something on the books, yet completely different one that is in practice.
I would also agree that Portugal is doing a rather poor job of recruiting foreign high-skilled work force than France or Germany.
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So this from a few days ago
Number of Immigrants in Portugal rises to 1.5M
Since September last year, of the 446,921 pending expressions of interest, 261,101 people have been scheduled and 241,183 have already been seen in person. 177,026 immigrants did not respond to AIMAās contacts, and their processes were terminated (OUCH, can you imagine being one of those 177,026 because the AIMA notification went into some black hole email address. That is frankly my biggest worry. So I am staying with my current atty even though their responsiveness is slow as molasses in winter.
I was just in Germany. Unless you have some skills that Germany really wantsā¦good luck with that.
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Intention of new physical presence requirements, now finally in English:
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The plus side is, Iām reading so much Portuguese about politics, that I might be able to read a PT contract by the time I receive my first card 
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In any presidential campaign, there is usually a scapegoat. Now it seems that raising the physical requirement and increasing requirement for citizenship is a scapegoat.
It is sadā¦ very sadā¦but I cannot see how it is going to be differentā¦
Terrence, if youāre going to insult us, at least do it in our forum:
As Iāve said repeatedly, many PGV / ARI applicants are already suffering from the consequences of Portugalās failure to uphold its obligations under this program, much less fulfill the false promises of the many shills who continue to mislead prospective applicants.
Our goals in this ārageā forum are to:
(1) allow people who have endured losses to share their emotions and stories;
(2) candidly discuss risks that may be too painful or scary for people in other forums, so that current and prospective program participants can make fully informed decisions.
This support group is a humanistic endeavor. Anger directed at liars and the lazy is not misanthropy.
Aiming to accurately predict the future is not fatalism. The upside case is already extremely well-covered by every promoter as well as the other 200 forums on NomadGate that donāt allow ānegativityā. We cover the negative here so that people have the chance to read all the information in totality and come to an accurate conclusion.
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Peace my friend. I dont think he intended to disrespect. But i do take offence to his choice of words. There is no way the description- fatalistic or misanthropic fits any of us venting on this thread. It is another matter that i do believe in causality and have 0 hope for mankind.
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It still seems like a minority to be ānegativeā even on a website without official censorship at least.
And another one of my posts got flaggedā¦hahahaā¦
I wonder the posts are flagged by automated algorithm or by person. If posts are actually read by someone and then gets flagged by that person, then i do not know what to say anymoreā¦ 
It was the one where i said lawyers and consultants continue to fly around the world conducting workshops selling the Golden Visaā¦hahahaā¦
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Itās trolls working for the shills we despise.
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@live2learn posts are usually flagged by users, but sometimes by Akismet (automatic spam filter) or due to including certain words or e.g. email addresses or phone numbers.
Then I (or Hanna) will review it and either agree with the flag or restore the post.
@anon45457555ās post got flagged for being off-topic due to where it was posted. It would have been allowed in this thread, however.
While itās generally fellow members that identify and flag posts breaking the forum rules, it does take time to regularly review, so I would really appreciate it if you guys can keep these kinds of posts to this thread. It shouldnāt be so hard to understand that your post goes against the forum rules @anon45457555āin particular these.
Once in a blue moon we do (temporarily) ban someone for taking up too much of the staffās time, so please do your best to follow these simple rules going forward 
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Thomas, as noted above, our good-faith posts were flagged even in this thread, despite not including spam words, personal information, or anything that would obviously justify a flag.
Hope that if you are willing to ban someone for taking up the staffās time, it goes both ways ā trolls that are unjustifiably flagging good-faith posts should be restricted as well.
Flagged or decided to be removed by a staff member?
I scrolled back a month or so in this thread and donāt see any that have been removed by staff. I found two deleted posts, but those were deleted by the author.
Itās of course possible that there are some before that, so feel free to message me directly about specific posts that you think have been unfairly removed and Iāll look into it.
Well Thomas, you and the staff do hold the cards regarding posts. I appreciate and acknowledge the opportunity given to express myself on this forum.
But i still stand by what I wrote.
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