Hi Alexander
thanks again
so, since I am residing outside Portugal, and have reached till now 5,5 year (12/2104) is to get the level A2 Portuguese language to apply for the PT citizenship. No need for renting or owning property, and no need of permanent residence permit ( something i would avoid for a fiscal matters)
NB: GV was granted following an investment. So i’m not holding a real estate investment ( no ownership and not renting)
my best
Hmmm, I would highly doubt that you could get citizenship while not living in Portugal.
That would seem like a rather strange thing for a country to allow.
Regarding supporting documents,
Is it highly recommended to get a police certicate from my place of nationality, even if I have been there for less than 2 weeks in the past 10 years, and less than 3 months in my entire lifetime?
Problem is my place of nationality takes about 4-6 months to have police certificate requested from outside of the country… in the best case.
While I have a copy of my birth certificate, or maybe even the original from ages ago.
Am I still requried or recommended to get a new birth certificate issued for myself? my lawyer mentioned this but it doesn’t make anysense to me.
I have a copy
Not to mention it will be probably impossible to get due to how unorganized the bureaucracy is in the country I was born in. It would have to be done probably from within that country, and given COVID-19 restrictions it would be very difficult for me to get there, and I might not even get it all anyways if I did.
Hello Alexander,
Your Post regarding the citizenship is excellent. I do have a question, assuming one does satisfy the subjective requirements, can one apply for citizenship after 5 years of temporary stay in Portugal?
Thank you for your time.
In practical terms i have seen applications made with only 5 years of legal residence.
I truly appreciate your quick reply. I do have another question, to which I am not receiving satisfactory responses.
Does shifting from D7 to a golden visa reset the time needed to get permanent residency? I did answer this
Shifting from D7 to GV - #5 by george1
but I am not certain about it . I welcome your comments on this matter. Thank you for your time
I dont see a problem.
The law requests legal residency for 5 years.
It does not really matter on which type of residency you are on, to be able to apply for it.
Thank you . Apologies if I am repeating myself. I am hung up on this is because it says
“Titularidade de autorização de residência temporária há pelo menos 5 anos”
but it is stops short of specifying whether it needs to be the same autorizacao or a different one will also qualify. Is there a possibility SEF will interpret this differently or the law is clear on this? If possible, any other link to what the law actually says will be greatly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Hi!
The 5 years of legal residence are counted according to the validity (time) of your valid residence permits. You add all the time in which your residence permits were valid.
According to the law it is clear that you need 5 years of legal residence to apply fo the citizenship.
Yes, there is a possibility that SEF will interpret this differently even if the law states it in this way. Sometimes SEF does not respect the law. For example the legal timeline to issue a Golden Visa residence permit is 90 days, but they may take up to 8 month…
Some real useful info in this thread. I have a question from the lawyers in the thread: So if we meet all the requirements(including connection to national community) for citizenship and since we can apply for citizenship after 5 years according to the new rule, then that means you don’t really have to stay in the country(I mean after the 5 years of GV investment period) in order to obtain the passport correct? Am I missing something here?
Also, this subjective rule of “connection to national community”, how subjective is this? Do most people meet the requirement?
The golden visa has specific time in country requirements, which average out to only like a week a year.
Yes I understand that its 7 days per year on an average for the 5 year period of investment. I was specifically asking for the time period after the 5 year mark until you receive your passport. is it still the same, 7 days?
I assume once you get citizenship you can do whatever you want.
No, i think what he means is what is requirement between year 5 and when you obtain citizenship.
You have the option to pay more money to SEF and you can continue the GV incrementally.
Otherwise, you can apply for PERM residency which means you do have stay requirement,
or you can apply for citizenship and there is NO stay requirement.
Yea I had a related question. Do citizenship applications take a lot longer to process than permanent residence applications? If that’s the case and one wanted to sell their GV investment as soon as possible, would it make sense to apply for permanent residence first so that they could sell their investment after receiving permanent residence, all while waiting for their citizenship to be processed?
Did you get your Portuguese passport already? How long did the application process take?
This is very helpful, thank you Dumont
I have a question regarding the requirement to “reside in Portugal for five years” does this requirement mean that:
A- I need to maintain my temporary residence permit (only stay a minimum of 7 days per year )
B- Does it mean I will need to be a permanent resident in Portugal for five years ( live more than six months of each year in Portugal ) in order to apply for Portuguese citizenship
This requirement is really confusing me.
A is correct.
It means that you will need to have a valid temporary residence permit for 5 years. To count the 5 years you only count the time for which your residence permits are valid.
Thank you Dumont for the clarifications. Are you a lawyer? If so may I ask if you have any data based on your experience about whether citizenship applications for GV holders (who have only spent the minimum stay requirements as under A. above) have been successfully approved? And a broad ratio of approvals vs rejections.
The reason why I am asking is that I agree with you the law is quite clear, but it’s difficult to understand the practical interpretation followed by the authorities, especially with respect to any stay requirements and effective ties to the Portuguese community.
Many thanks