As appealing as it sounds to let go of quality, responsibility, professionalism , efficiency, accountability, innovation, and pride of ownership (though in the US these have also slipped badly), for any new or recent PGV applicants, we donāt even have that luxury, because it will be years (or never?) before we receive our residence cards.
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I completely understand people who have not gotten initial approval that are in a much different position. With US passport keep in mind you can at least always leave!
Portugal overall is not a bad place to live and it still should be given consideration while having full awareness of this bureaucratic component that is horrendous. Being here a while, I would add that hostility of locals against Bougie foreigners is shocking, borderline xenophobic. @Hippopotamousse
I kind of wonder, for people whose stamp hasnāt expired yet - if you were to go to another schengen country, leave, get the exit stamp, then return directly into portugal carrying your expired cardā¦ could you get in on the expired card without being stamped? Probably. Then you would have an unstamped passport. then, if you wanted to go elsewhere, you could fly out of LIS to some third country, then fly back in to a schengen country without the cardā¦then leave to that third country then back into portugalā¦
itās all super convoluted of course.
This is super off-topic.
Has anyone tried just going to the SEF people at the border (as in, literally, just go to the office at the airport - or go to the Global Blue desk which by definition has to have a SEF border guard at it), explaining, and seeing if theyād just stamp it and reset it? Iām fairly sure a border guard could very well just fix it if they wanted to; if you read the SBC, a border guard has quite a lot of discretion in these matters. I mean really, they can chalk it up as āsome other idiot forgot to stamp it, weāre fixing itā. Once you get the errant stamp reset, youāre back to normal, then you just manage the situation carefully as above.
This is quite an issue anyway. THERE IS NO AGREEMENT on whether the passport of a third-country-national residence-permit holder SHOULD be stamped in the first place. The law says one thing but practice has proven quite, quite different across the entire Schengen Zone. A lot of passports have gone unstamped, leading to various forms of confusion. I have first hand experience of this. So border guards must have to fix this kind of shit all the time.
AFAICT, all you have to do is manage the stamp. That IS the visa. Donāt assume anything about āOMG there is this huge tracking database and theyāll knowā. As far as I can tell, based on my experience, there isnāt, and they donāt. There is a system for tracking ACTUAL Schengen visas (the VIS), and ACTUAL residence permits (IIRC also VIS), and VIOLATIONS of Schengen (SIS)ā¦ but not visa-waiver. I think that is why they want to do this ETIAS thing in the first place. Sure itās a response to ESTA or whatever, but they donāt have the data structures to track visa-waiver people cross-zone, so it has to be built.
Iām sure any number of you are rolling your eyes and saying āyouāre trying to tell me that that scan of your passport isnāt getting logged in Huge Database In The Sky? thatās so trivial a thing to do, that canāt possibly be true?ā Bwahahahaha. Cāmon, this is Europe. 27 countries would have to agree on what that database looked like and what data was in it and how data got logged in it and and and . Youād have to have consultations on the format of the database and what columns are in it and how long you keep the data and which languages do you support and a legal framework to allow it all since youāre consolidating national databases. Thereād have to be committees, a new office in Brussels. Who hosts the data? Procurement of equipment, hiring staff. Etc. All of which would take ā¦ how many years? How long has the ETIAS project taken? Nuff said.
In the more innocent world of even a decade ago, Iām sure no one in Europe thought they needed anything this complex.
As an aside:
Surprisingly, the SBC itself, and stuff around it, is quite acknowledging of the fact that resident permit holders can just randomly wander around the zone and itās difficult-to-impossible to police their activities in practice, and by and large, as I remember the language, the residence holder is legally given the benefit of the doubt. Thus if a situation comes up that is blatantly obviously bad - say you bought a house elsewhere and canāt prove an address in your home country any more etc - then sure youāre in trouble, but youāre going to get waved through a random border crossing check as long as you have some reasonable excuse.
That isā¦ if your permit is not expired, of course. Not helpful in your case.
YMMV and just one personās reading of the regs.
If someone has first-hand experience disproving any of this, Iād love to hear it.
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@blanusa Just wonder if you have a first-hand experience of Albania to compare with?
I have traveled there but not anywhere long enough to draw any conclusions.
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Good plan - make the most of the situation!
Who you calling bougie?!
They dislike any foreigner with money, or just people who are obnoxious about it?
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What do you mean the need to move? If one move their money and invest in funds or property with the end goal of moving there, wouldnāt that imply they need to move? I am waiting (nearly a year) for approval and then biometrics. I have invested in real estate verses investments. At the moment, I do not āneedā to be there, but in the future I will need to be there as a large chunk of my retirement savings is invested there. Regardless of the reason why someone has invested in the GV, the government needs to their job. I totally give them a break in being behind with Covid and the Ukrainian movement, but beyond thatā¦they need to step it up. Honestly, the 5 years should start once the investment is made and the application is submitted unless there is a valid reason why you are denied.
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Never met a single rude person. But then we have our labrador with us most times.
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Next week will be the one-year anniversary of my investment. Still no closer to pre-approval. Many others are also far awayā¦
13 months and still nothing, yet the ānewsā is posting rubbish like this:
Seriously, donāt waste your time or money on Portugal.
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What other options are there for obtaining a EU passport (without moving now)?
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Presumably you applied in the last working week (20-24 Dec) of 2021, with a multitude of othersā¦ ?
Pre-approvals for Dec 14 2021 trickled in yesterday.
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If a passport is your goal, your window to obtaining it within this decade from Portugal is already closed, so unless you have a nearly unlimited time horizon, save your money for something else.
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Applied earlier, but processing issues with the bank caused the final payment to SEF to be delayed far past the original plan.
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You are justifiably frustrated, but posts like this arenāt very helpful. And may not even be true! You certainly donāt know what the next 5 years will bring.
You applied during the time of presumably the highest volume of applications ever, but SEF seems to be working through December '21. Progress is progress.
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Which part may not be true? The multi-year SEF processing backlog? The deprioritization of Golden Visa processing by SEF? The hostility towards Golden Visas and their applicants from the Portuguese public? The disdain shown by the Portuguese PM toward the Golden Visa program? The apathy, at best, toward the GV program by the remainder of the Portuguese public sector? The demands by the EU to eliminate golden visas and passports altogether?
Nobody knows what the next five years will bring, but the PGV trends are all negative. Hope is not an investment strategy ā whatever your objective, there has to be somewhere else with better odds than PGV.
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The pre-approval backog is just over a year at this point, not āmulti yearā.
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Why post here to Just complain lol
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There might be, but there doesnāt have to be.
If your objectives are more Plan-B-y, then sure there are better alternatives.
If your objective is a life in the EU as a citizen and you donāt have ancestral ties to work with or several million dollars to spend on it and donāt want all the boots on the ground, there arenāt really any better alternatives - other countries have a path, but your practical odds are near nil as the citizenship requirements are really strict and completely subjective in practice.
And no, the EU really doesnāt want you. World as it is, I expect this back door to slam shut soon enough. I really have no expectation that I will get citizenship without having to go boots-on-ground; GV for me is really more jamming a foot in the door before it slams shut and running the clock in the hopes that it will help in the long run.
Iām not disagreeing with you at all on all the things going unpleasantly with PGV. Iām just saying that there arenāt necessarily better alternatives either depending on your actual goals and thereās no requirement that there be. The EU owes you nothing; if it wants to slam the door shut, itāll do that.
That said, I think ācitizenshipā is overblown. There are other paths to permanent residency in the EU, which, well, whatās the practical difference, if your goal is EU access? If you need a second travel document, buy a Caribbean one and call it good. You donāt have to fret about entry to the EU because you have the PR card. If I were going through it all over today, I might go that path.
Letās face it, all investment strategies are hope at some level. past performance is not a guarantee of future returns and all that. It might be indicative, but thatās all you ever get.
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Iād agree with that for the most part. Thereās some amount of backlash against immigration at this point in some sectors and there are definitely issues but there is also a recognition of the need to poach younger people from elsewhere.
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