Reading through posts, getting cold feet - is the golden visa actually a scam?

[hello_there (OGB)]

First: thanks to everyone who posts here. Even months/years later, your posts have been a huge help.

I’ve been looking into the golden visa, and gotten up to the point of actually making the investment and starting the application. Have lawyer, have tax id, have Portuguese bank account with euros ready to go. And I’ve been reading through tons of posts here, trying to make sure I understand the arguments for and against, and to decide if this really is worth it.

And I guess my question at this point is…does anyone here actually think this is worth it? For anyone? I’m thinking of backing out altogether

My goal here is insurance against authoritarianism in the US, and against future movement/residency/immigration restrictions worldwide (as tends to happen in times of worldwide instability).

From that perspective, a path to EU citizenship in 5-7 years, without needing to make a big move right now, in exchange for a big investment and a pile of legal/admin fees, seemed a worthwhile alternative to my other plan for if things get unbearably bad: uprooting over and over, chaining together various visas in various places for an unknown amount of time - assuming that’s even still a possibility by then.

But from what I’ve read here over the past few days, I’m thinking that the golden visa seems like a scam. It sounds like the average experience is endless waits, endless fees, unaccountable bureaucracy, with the average wait time for every step increasing faster than the days are passing? Delays so long that documents go out of date, and documents needed to replace those first documents also go out of date, leaving people in bureaucratic limbo for years?

I’ve seen some comments and news articles about AIMA finally speeding things up, and other comments and articles saying that’s a lie. Some claim recent applications are going faster than pre-AIMA ones. Some claim there’s no pattern and it’s all a crapshoot.

Here are some of the most comprehensive recent posts I’ve found:

Considering the Portugal Golden Visa – Seeking Advice & Insights

This is always my advice. If you are willing to throw away - as in, potentially lose entirely - several hundred thousand dollars and a fair bit of your time and effort on a “maybe”, then go for it. Otherwise, walk away. I think the risks are higher than when I first issued such advice years ago, but the advice remains the same. I speak this as someone who has had a permit in hand for several years now. I happen to have started with a decent understanding of the private equity space, a knack …

PGV / ARI Rage, Tragedy, & General Madness

The PT GV used to be a functional programme years ago - hence the attraction. People got their residency cards in a reasonable amount of time (like a year), although now they are having trouble renewing them, or they’ve done 5 years and are now waiting 2+ years in the citizenship application backlog. Then Covid came along (every service provider’s excuse). And SEF mutated into AIMA. SEF used to publish monthly GV approval stats (remember those, guys?). But AIMA’s never been able to produce anyt…

So my questions are:

1. Is the situation continuing to get worse? My lawyer claimed it’s getting better…but also carefully avoided answering my questions re: their sense of whether their own clients, on average, have been having more or less trouble than in months/years past.

2. Am I right in thinking that for all the talk of 5-7 years to naturalization, the actual number is more like 10-forever?

3. Why does anyone do this? Has anyone had decent experiences with any part of this process in the past year or two? Is there an argument for actually doing this at this point, or it is all a de facto (if not de jure) scam? Or am I reading too much into a forum where people are naturally more likely to post if they have problems than if everything’s gone well?

Thanks to anyone who answers. Right now, I’m leaning toward pulling out, and accepting any money lost to legal fees and/or currency conversion as the price of yet another lesson in not believing the sales brochures…

[cleversprites]

1. Nobody really knows if the situation will continue to get worse. I will say that in the past few years, not many things have gotten better for the golden visa applicant.

2. “Five to seven years” to naturalization is plainly false. I don’t think anybody has ever gotten citizenship in exactly five, so that’s not the correct lower bound, and as of today seven is maybe theoretically possible if everything goes your way. I think the estimate should be just “seven plus” years because there’s nothing actually capping the upper bound.

3. Portugal’s golden visa remains one of the easiest ways to acquire EU citizenship. Ireland’s was a lot more expensive before they shut it down. Spain generally does not allow dual citizenship. Greece requires seven years of continuous residence, and Italy requires ten. Malta requires four years of residence, but you’ll need two unrelated sponsors, and to be “suitable.” Cyprus requires seven years (the last one continuous) of residence and B1 level of Greek. So who’s actually offering you a better deal†?

† A caveat is in order: I’ve not researched those options very deeply at all except for Spain. Those are just from quick web searches and may be wrong or outdated, but the general point remains.

[hello_there (OGB)]

I did look pretty closely at several of those - and a couple others. As far as residence/naturalization by investment, I agree, Portugal’s deal appears to be the best in Europe (depending on how long it actually winds up taking – I doubt as many people would invest €500,000 if it were a 20 year program). Fair answer to the question I wrote (why would anyone put up with this) - thank you.

I’m also hoping to find out if there are people here who, having started this process, are still more hopeful than the general misery I’ve been reading about. It sounds like you’ve been in the queue for a while - I don’t know your specific situation or goals, but given your experience, if you hadn’t started, would you start today? As opposed to waiting another x years until you’re actually set to move, and hoping that a digital nomad/student/work/?? visa is within your reach somewhere you’d be interested in going?

[portugalwanderer (Terrence Biggs)]

You are looking at the situation through rose colored glasses. The situation is much worse than you think. Imagine being required to visit a country every year but you fear the country hates you and would prefer you leave. Imagine you want to love a country and integrate to it’s customs, language and history but you have a sneaking feeling that you aren’t wanted. Imagine spending your valuable time and money wanting to immerse yourself in the culture and become more fluent in the language, but you aren’t really sure if you are wasting your time and you will get rug pulled. Life is short, your time is precious. Choose wisely.

[anonymous69]

@hello_there

My goal here is insurance against authoritarianism in the US

I guess it might provide some insurance once you have the card. But that could be 4 years after you apply.

Otherwise if you suddenly want to move to Portugal, you must file an urgent lawsuit, and if you are lucky maybe you will get a card in 6 months, that will allow you to live in Portugal. Hardly a great emergency plan.

As for citizenship, it’s up in the air whether you can get that without living in Portugal full time. The AD party that won a plurality in the recent election, campaigned on extending the time and effective presence required to naturalize.

[jb4422 (Jeff B)]

@hello_there

I’m also hoping to find out if there are people here who, having started this process, are still more hopeful than the general misery I’ve been reading about.

if you find anyone, please do let us know.

I for one would not apply now, knowing what I know now. There are other answers.

This just goes to prove an old maxim that the time to sort out Plan B is well before you need it.

[jb4422 (Jeff B)]

@portugalwanderer

Imagine being required to visit a country every year but you fear the country hates you and would prefer you leave.

(a) I think this is true to some extent wherever you go. It’s just a matter of degrees and percentages.
(b) I don’t think this is somehow unique to Portugal at this point. Much of the world is turning against immigration, for reasons that are pretty understandable.

[hello_there (OGB)]

Thanks for your reply, Jeff - I only just made an account here, but as I mentioned, I’ve been paging through this forum a bunch and found your posts particularly well written and helpful (even linked one of them above).

Out of curiosity (and, you know, no pressure): in the hypothetical world where you hadn’t chosen this, what other answers would you be considering? Digital nomad/retirement visas? Educational/employment visas? Setting up some fancy currency hedge and wandering off to live amongst the trees?

[hello_there (OGB)]

Fwiw the ‘insurance’ idea was just that - insurance. If I thought my home was going to be unlivable tomorrow, there are faster options for clearing out. My fear is a slide into authoritarianism over several years, punctuated by a few bigger, scarier shifts. The hypothetical benefit here was preparing diverse options a couple years in advance, without having to uproot my whole life at the outset (to say nothing of the family).

…That is, assuming that those options were real, and reliable enough to count on. Which I’m coming to see is somewhat doubtful.

Re: the election…yeah, I saw. For the sake of argument, the lawyers I’m using described themselves as “cautiously optimistic” about the future there, on the grounds that a) it’ll take time for the government actually legislate anything and b) so long as one’s application is in, “…the legitimate expectations of investors who are already in the process must and will be respected.” - which they say is a bedrock principle of Portuguese law and, if it came to a court case, they’d be confident of success.

Open question whether they’re right, and to what extent this is still a sales pitch (I’m certainly not qualified to say).

[cleversprites]

One of the main reasons I went for the golden visa is because my wife and I both have aging parents, so we may have to spend substantial fractions of the year away from Portugal. I wanted the citizenship clock to keep ticking, which something like a D7 would not provide.

We applied in 2021 and received our residence cards last year, in time to move and get NHR 1.0 before it fully expired. Compared to the predicament that many others here have faced, I’m not going to complain, but obviously it’s been both slow, asinine, and quite expensive.

I honestly don’t know what we’d do if we’re only starting today. The “push” factor out of the US is stronger, but the “investment” options have become less attractive, taxes would be substantially higher, and the goal appears less certain. I would certainly have looked a lot harder at the other options.

[jb4422 (Jeff B)]

@hello_there

Out of curiosity (and, you know, no pressure): in the hypothetical world where you hadn’t chosen this, what other answers would you be considering?

I think first of all you need to look very carefully at your goals. As stated, they are very broad and fuzzy. PGV sounds like it is being applied as a very broad and fuzzy answer to a very broad and fuzzy concern. However, it isn’t really hard to poke some serious holes in both the concerns as stated and the answer thereto. However, doing so would take far more effort on my part than I really want to get into.

If you can’t have a broad warm-fuzzy/easy-button answer to your broad-fuzzy concern, then you either have to spend a lot of effort assembling more-specific solutions into a broader framework to attempt to address the broad concerns, or narrow / focus your concerns enough that simpler solutions suffice.

In this post and in other places, I’ve offered some suggestions of potential pieces one could assemble into a solution. There are many others I have not mentioned.

I won’t speak to what I would consider because (a) it’d be real mental work (b) I would have to discuss what the concerns I am attempting to address are, which I’m not willing to do, therefore any answer I provided would be free of context and therefore just a map to/from nowhere. There are plenty of pieces around; I’ve discussed many across various posts here. The rest I leave to you.

[hello_there (OGB)]

All fair points - thanks very much for this.

[hello_there (OGB)]

Ha…well, it hurt a little to read this, but only because I think you nailed it, and I feel a little silly.

Not that I think the concern is wrong on the merits, but short of pasting a real summary of the notes, arguments pros and con, and the practical, concrete, on-the-ground fears that I’ve laid out for myself over the last year or two, fuzzy and abstract it shall remain.

But “broad-fuzzy answer to a broad-fuzzy concern”: fair enough and well observed. As is this:

If you can’t have a broad warm-fuzzy/easy-button answer to your broad-fuzzy concern, then you either have to spend a lot of effort assembling more-specific solutions into a broader framework to attempt to address the broad concerns, or narrow / focus your concerns enough that simpler solutions suffice.

As advertised, Portugal’s golden visa looks like that sort of answer. As it exists, clearly not. I suppose I’ll just have to figure something else out. Thanks again.

[tommigun (Tommy Gunn)]

I think you need to clarify a few things for yourself before taking the plunge:

• do you really want a second citizenship, or you would be fine with a residence (ie a permanent residence)?
• do you want the above to be in the EU specifically (why?) or anywhere else would do?
• are you able to move to your ‘new country’ now and maintain physical stay there, or you need a paper residence with minimal physical stay?

Once clear, you’d have the set of options to choose from, some even without investment.

[tommigun (Tommy Gunn)]

@portugalwanderer

Imagine being required to visit a country every year but you fear the country hates you and would prefer you leave. Imagine you want to love a country and integrate to it’s customs, language and history but you have a sneaking feeling that you aren’t wanted.

I would not recommend entering any kind of RBI/CBI process with that type of emotional and romanticized expectation, thus avoiding inevitable disappointment that would distract you from your realistic and attainable objectives.
Expecting some kind of ‘integration’ as a first-generation fully matured adult human immigrant is a totally hopeless idea, regardless of the country Portugal or not.
On the contrary, if you approach your RBI/CBI as a business transaction, without any ‘soul-searching’ hopes, you’d have a pretty good chance of success anywhere.

[hello_there (OGB)]

Fair questions.

• A second citizenship seemed better to me than permanent residence, partly because even ‘permanent’ residences typically have periodic renewal requirements, and partly because citizenship seems a more difficult thing for the government/legal system to renege on - something I’m wary of, given how it’s going for some immigrants in the US. That said, permanent residence remains an option, and I’ve considered a couple, depending on the location and the price (in terms of time/money/etc).

• Why EU specifically? Partly diversification (if my plan B also fell to authoritarianism, so long as the EU doesn’t break up, there’d be a built-in plan C, D, etc), partly cultural fit (on a relative basis, at least - I have a couple distant connections there, have backpacked there periodically, and I’m kinda-sorta-almost functional in at least one romance language), and, maybe silly, but partly the weather (I can’t stand hot weather, and I don’t think ex. Costa Rica or Thailand are likely to get colder this century).

• Can I move now? That’s the sticking point. I can’t. At least, not unless a) I want a divorce, or b) things get scary enough on the homefront that everyone else (including my wife) agrees it’s time to go. My fear there is that, by then, the costs/sacrifices will be far higher, and the options fewer and worse.
  I’ve met Venezuelans who arrived in the US in the 2000s, and some who came around 2016, and the difference in costs and outcomes are vast - to say nothing of those who arrived in the past three years. The tradeoff is more uncertainty the farther in advance you’re planning, but that’s why I’m calling it insurance. Planning for an outcome that I think is likely, but which even I’d admit is far from certain (the good guys in Brazil and Poland, for instance, are at least somewhat successfully clawing back power from wannabe Autocrats).

I was looking into other options before tentatively settling on Portugal’s visa, and I suppose I’ll be expanding that list, but if anyone has suggestions or recommendations, I’d be grateful.

[anonymous69]

@hello_there

I’ve met Venezuelans who arrived in the US in the 2000s, and some who came around 2016, and the difference in costs and outcomes are vast - to say nothing of those who arrived in the past three years.

Interestingly though, Venezuelans can easily move to and live in other Mercosur countries (like the “built-in plan C, D, etc” benefit you mentioned re the EU). They can even visit the EU visa free for tourism, which no doubt makes it much easier to hunt for opportunities there. It’s really just America that’s now much more closed off to Venezuelans, compared to a year ago when they had access to a very generous asylum program.

[piquant_bugs.07 (Adam S)]

The flip side to a lot of the advice you’re getting here is that based on your current needs and lifestyle there isn’t really a better option than Portugal’s ARI. Yes, the waits are long and yes, there has been talk of generally trying to make citizenship harder to get, but the level of cynicism you will find on the board here contains an awful lot of hyperbole. As an American you already have a lot of freedom of movement, and EU citizenship gives you even more regardless of whether the situation in the US gets worse. No other program is going to offer that possibility without a full time move.

[anonymous69]

@piquant_bugs.07

there isn’t really a better option than Portugal’s ARI

With the caveat that I definitely wouldn’t do the donation option given the irreversibility of a donation if Portugal pulls the rug. Only liquid funds that can easily be redeemed back to cash.

If Portugal pulls the rug on citizenship, for just residency, something like Latvia’s investment visa may be much faster in practice.

[piquant_bugs.07 (Adam S)]

I’m sure for other nationalities Latvia offers a good deal, but permanent residence and citizenship require full relocation, and the residency permit itself only gives the same access to the EU that US citizens already enjoy.

I definitely agree though, don’t take the donation route in Portugal.