Remember this story:
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Is there some kind of alert a property owner can set up with the land registry (whatever itâs called in Portugal) as a precaution? Basically to have some peace of mind that at least Iâll receive an email alert if anyone tries to sell / put a mortgage on my property.
Presumably you have all your documentation in order and ready to apply the day you cross the 5 year markâŚyou are mere weeks away
The following is based only on MovingTo studying 127 of their own clientsâ GV applications between January 2023 and February 2026. The NomadGate data set is considerably larger, but if youâre interested in another takeâŚ
Processing Time Comparison
- Portugal: 90 days required - 34 months actual (12x longer)
- Greece: No official timeline - 11 months actual
- Spain: 20 days required - 3.2 months actual (3-4x longer)
- Italy: 30 days required - 68 days actual
Why Italy Works and Portugal Doesnât
The divergence stems from structural differences in how each country handles investor applications.
Italy created a dedicated investor visa unit within its Ministry of Economic Development with clear documentation requirements and a functional digital application system. The program processes lower volumes than Portugalâs, but the infrastructure was designed to handle investor cases specifically.
Portugalâs golden visa applications flow through AIMA, the same agency processing asylum claims, work permits, and general immigration matters. When application volumes surged following favorable program terms, the system couldnât scale.
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/travel/article315156591.html
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Trying to get all the documents ready by end of April but it has not been easy (all those different residences coming back to haunt me big time 
)
Also a bit nervous about 1 April. Never know if they just pass the law quickly by taking out the unconstitutional parts..
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For what itâs worth the latest update here says there wonât be a final vote 1 April: https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-defense-fund-protect-the-5year-citizenship-promise
But I donât know what their source isâŚ
I hear you. Iâve been working on it for the last 6 months myself.
From the WhatsApp group:
Another sign of the times: âNĂŁo somos criminosos, somos vĂtimas." AIMA ordena expulsĂŁo de milhares de nepaleses que sofreram burlas - Expresso
Some years ago, Nepalese immigrants were scammed by a Portuguese man who took their money but applied a fake apostille stamp to their (real) criminal background checks. Now that the scam has come to light, rather than giving them a chance to resubmit the documents, the government has instead issued deportation orders to thousands of these immigrants.
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And people think that the government will allow them to apply earlyâŚ
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For anyone still considering applying to Portugal Golden Visa, please wake up! Even IMI Daily is dragging the program:
â
Portugal in 2021:
âInvest EUR 500k, naturalize in 5 yearsâ
in 2025:
âWe took 4 years to process your application. We put golden visa investors at the back of the line for ideological reasons. But donât worry, weâll count your wait time toward your naturalization timeline.â
in 2026:
"We changed the law, so now youâll only be eligible for naturalization in 2035, and the time spent waiting wonât count after all.
Oh, and the processing time for naturalization is itself another 3 years. So you can look forward to a Portuguese passport in 2038, 17 years after you invested.
Unless, of course, we change something else by then.
Anyway, thanks for the half a million euros."
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Priced out of Lisbon: When a full-time job isnât enough | DW Reporter
Once the citizenship law passes, they can no longer blame immigration. Whom will they blame next?
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I question your premise that the nationality law would eliminate immigration as a factor in the housing shortage. The nationality law does not impose any restrictions on immigration, to my knowledge.
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The same PSD+Chega coalition also amended the immigration law last year.
And their stated reason for making citizenship harder is to reduce the âdraw effectâ on immigrants that 5 year citizenship supposedly had.
So theyâve already shot their initial two shots against immigrants, what will they do next if housing stays expensive?
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Itâs darkly funny that you started this thread in Sep 2024 before the citizenship rug pull was even dreamed up and the GV was already awful even before then and has only gotten so much worse since.
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I have my doubts that all of the CPLP citizens (65-80% of Portuguese immigrants, according to Googleâs infobox) will give up and return to their home countries because of the extra 2 year pre-application wait, but weâll see.
Imagine that youâre a Brazilian citizen who missed the nationality law cutoff by one day. You must wait two more years before you can apply. Not many people are applying for citizenship during those 2 years, so the 3 year processing queue is steadily shrinking. By the time you apply 2 years from now, the queue is a lot shorter, so your net time to receive a passport probably isnât much different than it would have been without the law changing. In other words, itâs a nothingburger for the vast majority of migrants in Portugal. Itâs certainly a bummer for the small minority of residents from outside the CPLP or EU who are seeking nationality rather than merely long-term EU residency. Focusing on ARI participants, most of them donât live in Portugal anyway, and have virtually no effect on the housing market at all.
I reiterate my doubts that this will change the housing situation.
Youâre forgetting to add the processing time to first card. Not sure how long that is for CPLP cards but probably at least another year?
But youâre right itâs much less painful than 10 years. And I bet those Brazilians will remember who screwed them over once theyâre able to vote.
Been a while since I posted on the rage thread. Between this citizenship fiasco and needing to climb onto our roof every day for the past number of weeks to fix the leaks and the endless landscape gardening, leisure time has been significantly limited.
We have taken the decision to renew our residency cards. Ironically they expired on April 1, know known as Rug Pull Day. 
While we are going ahead with the renewal, we are not moving forward with early citizenship applications. My wife can apply for Irish, mother-in-law doesnât want one, and I am not going to keep trying to chase that rainbow. This feels like it will be our only renewal as other options may be more feasible in the medium-long term. While Iâm not a big fan of spending âŹ4500pp on a 2-year renewal, it feels like the government âran down the clockâ on us. Had we known last autumn what this would look like, we would have left. But we kept on trying to get a better idea of what the program would look like. In the end we felt like we didnât have an adequate amount of time to sell the villa (still needs work), wrap up our affairs and leave. So the renewal almost felt inevitable, sadly.
Maybe, down the road, the government realises what they have done and there is some kind of retroactivity clause established a posteriori, then that may change things for us. However, I do not find this to be a likely occurrence. So, in effect, we will have bought (literally) ourselves 2 years grace with this renewal with the view to selling and moving when the time is right, unless there is a compelling reason for us to stay. The chaos of this investment program, the problems with our house and the 5 bed rural Air BnB party palace near us has made our goal of a quiet, peaceful, relaxing life in the hills an impossibility.
We hope that this next period brings some good news for us along with some much needed clarity. One can only hope.
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What makes you think that IRN processing will become more efficient? We already saw how the government can shamelessly deprioritise ARI recipients, and for that matter, any other group of immigrants. Leaving IRN queue long and inefficient will be viewed as a very effective means of disincentivising long-term access to the country.
The only thing that can change ARI fate is a next major financial meltdown, i.e. another PIGS crisis.
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No, it will not help at all!
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