@anonymous69 Not sure I agree with that framing. Legal opinion isnāt just a reflection of the consensus among random lawyers. And judges donāt rule based on majority sentiment. That said I do agree itās wise to be cautious about new GV applications right now, especially making irreversible investments. But for those already in the system under the current rules, the real question isnāt whether grandfathering is āguaranteed,ā but whether the legal and political context makes it a defensible and likely outcome. And I think there are strong arguments that it does.
@Garrett I understand the point youāre making, but thatās the case for everything written on here by people too. A lot of unverified info gets regurgitated - rumours, poor reasoning, clickbait articles etc. āStopping AI answersā seems like overkill, hard to define and police. AI is trained on the same data sets we are all reading. Everyone should already be verifying things they read on here if they want to rely on it for decision making.
My personal experience with the PT courts found itās all a ājudge lottoā when it came to suing AIMA for exceeding 90d to make a decision.
Another client of my GV advisor sued same time we did, used the same lawyers, but demonstrated zero āties to Portugalā or āurgency.ā Whereas we provided reams of evidence (car purchase in PT, moved household goods to PT, seventeen return flights to PT since house purchase, etc.) ā¦ and hey they won and we lost.
Not looking forward to playing that crap lotto again
My position is in this sense because Law No. 56/2023, published on October 6, eliminated the real estate investment modalities that allowed obtaining the Golden Visa through the acquisition of properties worth ā¬500,000, ā¬350,000 without a transition period for those who had only started the investment but had not submitted the residence application process.
The changes came into force almost immediately after enactment, without a transition period for those who had already started the investment process or were planning to invest in these modalities, so there was a rush to submit the applications quickly, so that they could be considered pending applications. I am positive that if there is any legislative change, it will still take time and that the legitimate expectations of applicants will be safeguarded. However, I also consider it important to warn of the possibility of changing the nationality law without all the safeguards regarding residences and then the discussion will move to another venue (court). I am just being cautious since these are mere speculations about what the Government will do and we need to see the proposed law, the exceptional and transitional regime. My suggestion is to submit nationality applications as soon as they meet all the requirements to be considered pending applications and to have greater guarantee of legal protection.
As Iāve told before I doubt that ARI holdersā presence requirements for citizenship will be increased. It has minimal effect on immigration and it requires more stuff to verify. The only plus is that parties could gain political scores. āWe do not sell our citizenship!ā And if it pass (which I doubt) it should be covered by grandfather clause, either for current ARI holders including future stays (best case) or at least for time periods until the law (worst case).
The increase of number of years for everybody who wants naturalization through residency is a different story. First, the law which added the waiting time since application until residency permit was pushed by PS which has a majority at that time, and was voted when parliament was already dismissed but was given time to finalize issues. Other parties opposed to that law. PS representation decreased by half since then! In general, other parties and most portugueses view it as wrong and unfair. First, PS opened doors and flooded immigration system without adding resources to it, then said that as the system could not analyze all these applications in time, they will add waiting time into time for citizenship. I am not mentioning the fact that with autorenewals nobody checked any requirements at all during 4 years. EU is also not happy about all those facts. I do not know why they could not vote and cancel that new law, but it looks like they have chosen easier way - just to increase number of years. It will not be retroactive, as everybody who has already submitted will be treated by the old rules. So I would expect that it could be done, as PSD and IL and Chega all want stricter rules.
One of the strangest things is that the backlog keeps getting bigger after years regardless of whatever measure/solution they have tried. None of political parties proposed a solution in which stopping receiving new application (for example: GV) until the backlog is completely solved. Instead of stopping the influx and concentrating solving the backlog, they do the opposite i.e. promoting and allowing more new people to come over and then put all the blame to the current system being overloadedš.
It seems to me that this problem will likely to continue for years (or hundred years, who knows). At the current rate of accepting new applications, all resources are dedicated to analise new applications and there is zero resource to analise the renewal. Soon it will reach to a point that even with 100% resources Aima only can issue cards to 25% of new application within 5 years due to the snow balling effect. There is no signal that backlog will be seriously solved.
This is one of my great fears: that AIMA will dedicate all resources to new applications , that the new applicants will achieve approval while those of us who applied multiple years ago and who completed biometrics years ago will be left in limbo with no resolution.
It is even more scary when they only care about receiving the money from new applications and put the new comers on the list of waiting for 5-7 years. Once the money arrives to Aimaās account or the investment is made, goodbye and see you in 5-7 years.
Disagree. New government which came 11 months ago and will continue to rule after this election, has immediately stopped manifestaĆ§Ć£o scheme. The number of applications for residency fell reportedly by 80%. But backlog will require more time to be solved. Last number of immigrants was 1.6 mln!
Then they introduced CPLP which allows all portuguses speakers from Brasil Angola Mozambiqueā¦enter the country with even less control. Now CPLP has a physical resident card instead of paper as before. It is in fact even easier for people from CPLP. Stopping the Manifestacao de interess only prevents the South Asian. But adding up those two numbers, the inlux is always a positive number and this number keeps getting bigger.
Backlog needs time to solved. Thatās how politicians keep saying for years. And surely as time goes one, it will take more times to solve the backlog. Not sure who has the opimistism to believe that backlog will be reduced i.e GV will get cards in hand within 1 year after making investmentā¦be real and realistic!
Nope, it looks like they are more and more inclined to consider everything in the order of applications. Equal, without all this schemes to get a slot via friends in IRN/AIMA. The only problem is that they consider ARI as the least problem, and continue to assign the least priority to it. So backlog in manifestaƧƵes first, than family members (it is a huge backlog for family members for people with usual residency permits), than renewals and may be , just may be ARI after all of that. Where we should concentrate our efforts now is to change the priority of ARI in the eyes of officials. I believe it is unacceptable that we are always the last.
Leaders of Portugal will never change the priority unless the new applications of GV drop siginicantly due to long processing time. For now, as they see it , the number of new GV application increases year after year. Why would they improve anything? Business still going wellā¦
CPLP was introduced in 2023, so also by PS, but you are right, current government favors CPLP vs manifestaĆ§Ć£o. One of the reason, may be, is that EU opposes CPLP less, because they could not travel in EU outside of Portugal. EU/Schengen started to check visas/permits more and more often, so it is more risky for people to break this rule. And it emphasizes even more the need to increase residency time. Iāve heard here in the chat, that if residency time will be increased, than we may argue to EU to protect our rights. I am really very skeptical about that, as EU many times expressed its unhappiness towards flood of immigrants very poorly checked via Portugal. Even threatened to introduce some sanctions for Portugal. So EU would welcome any tougher rule in Portugal.
I am talking about Golden Visa applications specifically. The emphasis should be on resolving applications in progress for years and awaiting final approval with no resolution in sight. Do those FIRST as opposed to leaving them at the end of the line.
Portugalās check is still 100% stricter than what Germany did to the Syrians. They let millions of Syrians simply walk into the country without any identification and any sort of background check.
āNope, it looks like they are more and more inclined to consider everything in the order of applications.ā
Show me where they are doing this? New applications are being approved after biometrics. If you had your application in 2021 and biometric appointment in 2023, you should not still be waiting IF applications are being considered in chronological order.
With the exisitence of CPLP and none of the political parties wants to cancel CPLP, it means that they keep allowing people coming into the country very easily. Consequently, backlog keeps rising and probably by end of this year, the total number of foreigners will jump from 1.6 mil to 2 mil.
I did some more digging, and hereās what I could find re: specific 2025 campaign statements w.r.t. years and time-in-country for citizenship:
AD (PSD + CDS)
The party making the most definitive comments on this topic is the AD - the one likely to form the next government, and propose new legislation.
Early-April comments by AntĆ³nio LeitĆ£o Amaro: āWe have to re-look at the requirement of Portuguese citizenship process. Specifically the minimum period of residency and the presence in the national territory.ā
From the ADās electoral programme statement, page 143: āReviewing the requirements for granting Portuguese nationality, particularly with regard to foreign citizens, extending the minimum time of residence and effective presence in national territoryā¦ā
I only found indirect AD comments re: 10 years, e.g. in O Globo: āA proposal presented at one of the Executive meetings was to extend the current five years of residency required to apply for a visa to a period of ten years. This was confirmed by a source who attended the meeting.ā
Liberal Initiative (IL)
Minority AD government above will probably need ILās votes to get things done.
IL electoral programme proposes a ārevision of the nationality law based on clear, fair and stable criteriaā and āAccording to an official source from IL, cited by Lusa, the objective is to āincrease the number of years to obtain nationalityā after a ādiscussion and review of the criteriaā and a āconsensual debateāā (see DN article and Portugal Pulse article)
I couldnāt find any specific number of years that IL was seeking.
Chega
Chegaās 2025 programme advocated for ālimiting immigration,ā but I didnāt find any explicit reference to tighter requirements for Portuguese citizenship by them. They seem to like keeping things vague.
Explanation: inside each group. Examples - 1) Citizenship applications. Inside each group of applications to particular conservatory with particular reason/article they are trying to analyze according to application date. Earlier, speed could differ a lot. Nobody could explain why one application moved faster than the other. At the moment, it looks like they are not allowed to analyze applications from the next dates until previous period was analyzed and most applications moved to three categories - positive, negative, or request of new documents. Consequences - application could not move faster than similar in that particular conservatory. However, there are still examples that some applications move SLOWER than the group. Between different conservatories differences still exist. 2) On renewals of usual residency permits they reportedly send invitations according to expiration date. Does not work well yet.
Most immigrants from CPLP countries chose manifestaĆ§Ć£o when it existed instead of CPLP. After the scheme was closed, number of applications for residency permits fell by 80%. In 2024 hey have improved the CPLP program and allowed to apply inside the Portugal, and the number starts to grow but far from compensate the elimination of manifestaĆ§Ć£o scheme. Via manifestaĆ§Ć£o they have submitted sometimes blank sheets instead of documents, and that time started ticking. It looks like CPLP is more strict than manifestaĆ§Ć£o.
Chega is vague because it does not want to vote with PSD or PS and give them the argument in the further political campaign. So we will see how they try to abstain from voting for stricter immigration rules, which come from PSD. May be just crying for much stricter rule and saying that they are against, because proposed changes are too soft? Now, Chega is the second strong party, it could not follow the strategy of a small opposition party. But how they change the strategy is not clear yet.
