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Cloudflare CEOâs thoughts on Portugal investment and immigration⊠#clownshow indeed! 
âWe were promised a lot to hire a lot of people in Portugal. We hired a lot of people and the Portuguese government didnât fulfil any of its promises,â said the manager, describing the process as a â#clownshowâ [circus].
The conditions for investing have worsened in several respects, but âabove all [in] immigrationâ, as well as visas and what he says is âsuffocatingâ bureaucracy. âAbove all, Iâm tired of being told that things will get better if we invest more, only for the trends to keep getting worse,â he added.
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I can not stop thinking about the money we spent for filing suits. if there would be a dedicated 3 people just for Golden Visa, we could have solved our problems 100 times. We could easily create necessary funds for them. They are looking solutions at somewhere else. They changed organizations, processes etc⊠However the real solution was so easy. Just basic math 
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âŠand they have. At least for as long as this new minority government lasts.
Itâs official. For the first time in history, the PS has become the third political force, with AndrĂ© Venturaâs [Chega] party rising to second place and leader of the opposition, thanks to the votes of emigrants.
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This article only talks about CPLP, but isnât the GV backlog also being worked on by the âMission Structure?â
If it used to be possible, after thousands of calls, to at least find out some information about the process, it is no longer possible. DN Brasil has learned that staff at the contact centre have been banned from providing information to immigrants about the progress of their cases.
The new order from the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) was confirmed to the newspaper both by contact centre staff and by immigrants who have tried to find out about their cases. âI called more than 50 times until I was answered and they said that they no longer had the information they used to have, that now I couldnât find out about the processes,â an immigrant told the newspaper, who made the call on 23 May.
âŠSeveral other reports from DN Brasil readers indicate the same order. The staff, also on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, explain that the order came from the centreâs coordinators and that the measure is only valid for Mission Structure cases. When contacted by DN Brasil, the agency did not respond.
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Seems reasonable, if you are crunched on manpower, to stop wasting time spinning your wheels providing updates instead of actually processing files.
But, of course, this is just the best of terrible options, which they have to pick from because of their incompetence.
AIMA President spoke yesterday, mostly about MI. As usual zero mention of GVs, but to be fair nobody in the media seems to ask about GVs either.
The agencyâs president [Pedro Portugal Gaspar] says that the mission structure, which deals with the regularization of immigrants, will be extended until the end of the year, as reported by PĂBLICO Brasil. But the number of employees will decrease.
âŠSpeaking during the inauguration of the new Local Support Centre for the Integration of Migrants (CLAIM) of the Nasce e Renasce Association, in Musgueira, on the northern outskirts of Lisbon, Gaspar added that, of the more than 260,000 remaining cases, around 130,000 had already been finalized, of which 90,000 had received residence cards, and 130,000 were still under analysis. âOf the 260,000 (residence applications), 130,000 are still to be assessed, so to speak, and 130,000 have been assessed, with 90,000 cards issued,â he said.
Later, however, AIMA confirmed the data via AgĂȘncia Lusa, pointing out that 85% of the applications for residence via expressions of interest have already been concluded (including the 170,000 extinguished), with approximately 69,000 cases still under analysis. There are also âthe 4,500 (cases) of non-compliance with the legal rules in criminal mattersâ. In other words, it is immigrants who are subject to expulsion from Portugal.
âŠ[he also commented on residence permits that were extended only until 30-June 2025 - I put that bit in the NG renewals thread]
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Minister of the Presidency (AntĂłnio LeitĂŁo Amaro) held a press conference yesterday to mark one year of the migration plan. He spoke for an hour, but as usual I canât find any mention of GVs. Seriously need to get some journalists asking questions on our behalf!
Highlights from ECO:
LeitĂŁo Amaro guarantees that âpractically all expressions of interest have been decidedâ
Summary of expressions of interest
- Of the 446,921 pending cases, 274,000 appointments were made;
- Of these, 253,000 were attended to;
- Of these, 184,000 have already been decided (and 69,000 are awaiting a decision);
- Of these, 150,000 received a positive response [and thus 34,000 got rejected]
- âpractically all the situations of expressions of interest have been decidedâ, with around half of the requests having been rejected.
- the Minister of the Presidency explained that the rejections concern cases in which there are previous orders from other countries that these people cannot be in the Schengen area .
- One of the tasks yet to be completed is related to CPLP titles. After having dealt with all pending expressions of interest, the mission structure has already begun to deal with these titles: of 210 thousand pending processes, 115 thousand have already been dealt with
- this AIMA operation cost the State 25 million euros , but generated 82.3 million euros in revenue (fees that the State should have already received, if the processes had been scheduled in due time), added Rui Freitas.
âŠplus some extra from DN:
Mission Structure has already completed 150 thousand immigrant processes
This task force had a total of 1,465 collaborators, including 843 lawyers and solicitors and 120 case decision-makers. The Government decided to extend the work until December 31st. In addition to finalizing the work in progress, this same team will renew the thousands of expired residence permits - which immigrants currently have no way of renewing.
(I posted more about what they said re: renewals here)
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So the processing capacity is 368k cases (=253k MI cases + 115k CPLP cases) per year (to be generous; 69k of the MI cases have yet to receive decisions) under the missionary structure, and the renewal cases alone add up to 375k cases per year (based on the renewal cases accumulated since June 2024). Head is not above water.
On top of this, there are 95k new CPLP applications still pending, and we already know they have priority over new GV applications.
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Presumably, renewals are easier than initial applications though
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The million dollar question is whether the 210k CPLP applications all came in since June 2024. If ~200k new CPLP applications are submitted each year, then the numbers donât workâŠ
In other words, the following get added to the backlog each year:
- 210k new CPLP applications
- X thousand new GV applications
- Y thousand other applications (student visa, work visa, D7, etc.)
- 375k renewal applications
If the processing capacity (368k new applications, which translate into a higher number of renewal applications) < what is added to the backlog each year, then the backlog will snowball year after year. Once AIMA dismantles the missionary structure, the snowballing gets worse.
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IMI Dailyâs latest summary of PT GV approvals:
The rest of the IMI article is basically rehashing the Bloomberg article that was posted elsewhere on NG a few days ago (free to read version here).
Not sure which topic this goes under, but todayâs Washington Post story about the Trump administrationâs proposal to add more countries to the travel ban list included this statement regarding how to make the list:
âOther reasons included the availability of citizenship by monetary investment without a requirement of residencyâ.
I know itâs not from the Portuguese government, and the GV program deals with residency rather than citizenship. It still doesnât feel like a positive development.