I did my GV investment almost 5 years ago. Quick preapproval, and then nothing. My application must have been lost in SEF then AIMA systems because I have never been invited to biometrics and even with the new system, I was emailed but then my portal never allowed me to upload documents. No one at SEF or AIMA has ever replied to anything me or either of my several lawfirms over the years. All my lawsuits and appeals at various points have been denied because I donāt live in Portugal. I had held out hope that since wait time would count that eventually things would normalize. Now that waittime concession will be rescinded and citizenship time goes to 10 years, it seems like a lost cause. I hate having to deal with my portuguese bank and the taxes around my investment. Trying to think through if itās time to sell, even at a big loss, to put this behind me.
That has not happened yet. Until it does, this is just a speculation.
Sorry to hear that your application appears to be lost. You should probably consider yet another law suit attempt to seek a resolution. Also, when communicating with AIMA, it is best to send a registered return-receipt-requested letter to them: at least you will have a proof of the receipt of your correspondence.
Have you considered talking to the press? 5 years with no card is so outrageous that you might get good headlines out of it, like the ones below:
Also, have you taken steps to establish āurgencyā when filing your previous lawsuits? For example, if your GV investment is not in real estate (hence no physical address in Portugal), then perhaps sign a cheap lease in a cheap city (not Lisbon/Porto)? It sucks to throw away good money after the bad, but since youāve clocked 5 years, you might actually have a chance of squeezing through as the door is closing.
Very sorry to hear your story. I feel your pain. If I were you, I would exit and leave this behind. Sometimes, luck does not stay on our side and it is OK to accept the lost and move on.
Iād say the answer depends on how profitable your original investment was.
If profitable enough - Iād wouldnāt exit. Otherwise you need to know when to cut your losses.
Its mostly flat in nominal terms, meaning very bad returns. The last five years were so much inflation and stock market growth, it feels like burning that money.
From reading the forum, it sounds like the backlog for lawsuits now is itself years. Hard to imagine even I could find a judge who would accept the lawsuit as urgent that my card would be issued in time for the new law.
True but AIMA special team did reportedly manage to clear the backlog of 400k MI applicants and is supposed to focus on ARI second half of 2025. Of course no guarantees but Iād estimate thereās at least a 30% chance your application does get moving in the 2nd half of the year if you and your lawyer keep emailing AIMA to open the portal for you.
I would wait until the citizenship laws pass, you might get away with it anyway, if you are already at 5 years since approval, I would just apply for citizenship anyway if you have everything else in order. You would be in with the old rules and they would be forced to go to court.
Maybe you can take the Portuguese government to court at the European court of human rights, as absurd as it sounds, your rights might be being violated given they havenāt done anything for 5 years despite their laws saying 180days or whatever. If you go down this route, you could talk to press about your law suit as well, would make a headline grabbing story at least.
Itās a risk/reward thing, and as you say itās more than about just the money, itās the bother and mental strain factor. only you know how much itās really worth it to you to keep hanging on.
That said, I donāt think anyone would blame you for quitting at this point.
You are probably right. The cost vs reward of a new lawsuit in 2025 is not convincing.
See #6. Although Iāve learned over the years to not take any SEF/AIMA promises seriously, perhaps ask your lawyer (or multiple law firms at the same time) to email and send registered snail mail to AIMA repeatedly? Offer 1000 euro or something like that if anyone succeeds in getting you a biometrics appointment first.
As I understood from our lawyer, the new proposed law does not apply to Golden Visa applicants, and even if it did, it would be unconstitutional to apply it retroactively.
No, the contrary. There hasnāt been any reports or draft law that excludes Golden visa applicants. We are hoping there would be some sort of relief for us. But itās looking bleak
We hope so but this article indicates that the intension is for immigrants to āliveā in Portugal prior to naturalisation. On the face of it that excludes GV.
āall six Portuguese victims were in fact foreigners, who had never lived in Portugal, this change is particularly relevant: the government is closing āloopholesā that have seen a Portuguese passport seen little more as a way into Schengen space and other European countriesā
What, does this mean the victims were golden visa holders or just people that moved from portugal to somewhere else in the schengen zone and worked under the table, or just lived somewhere else? Like this seems weird to me. Even weirder when you read Chegaās document, it doesnt say ANYTHING about physical presence requirements for citizenship.
They are literally not closing this loop hole in anyway other than the loosely defined āconnectionsā to portugal clause that Chega have in their document that could be interpreted the same as now.
Lol they were Indians from Goa who are Portuguese by colonization (Portugal considered Goa part of Portugal) and subsequently by descent.
Literally none of Chegaās proposed changes would have ANY effect on them. This is pure kayfabe.
In fact the proposal is to make citizenship by descent available even directly to great-grandchildren of citizens. (It is already available if the other links on the chain of descent registered as citizens, but now it can skip 3 generations even if the child and grandchild both never registered).