As said earlier, poor foreigners are cheap workforce and the local portuguese cannot compete with those people. For sure the poor foreigners have a lower living standard and can survive with a minimum salary. If the govt in the past years did not let those poor foreingers to enter easily, more local portuguese would still stay in their home country.
Same thing applies to the poruguese in Germany Switzerland Luxembourg. They find jobs over there because they accept a lower salary and have a lower living standard than locals.
Now even the new citizenship law is going to be changed today to 10 years of physical requirement, I am sure that most of the poor foreigners will still stay. Where else can they go? Being able to go out is a huge challenge. In addition to that, if one decides to go to ireland because right now 5 years is a requirement to apply for citizenship in Ireland, then in next 2-3 years Irish Govt can raise it from 5 to 10 years (just like UK)… then they will be even more screwed…so it is better to stay. 10 years is long but at least they have settled down and it is unlikely to be raised to 20 years.
I agree with you. The real issue is that these people should not, would not, or will not be granted Portuguese or EU citizenship, as they entered through low-skilled labor streams—programs similar in logic to things like H or TN visas, which are ultimately designed to keep labor costs low.
To protect the local workforce, the number of entries should be transparently announced each year, and permits should be granted for fixed terms—say, three years.
But the problem is, Portuguese bureaucracy is still stuck in the 1940s. They neither improve nor reform anything in a meaningful way. Whether it’s due to laziness, incompetence, or pure institutional inertia, they’ve lumped golden visa applicants, asylum seekers, foreign workers, international students, and retirees all into the same administrative pile. And that’s led to big, structural problems.
I’m a young investor—I have time and patience to wait this out. But if I were in my 50s? No way I’d even consider going through with it. It just wouldn’t be worth it.
Frankly, I wish more countries would use the U.S. immigration system as a pivot—structured, selective, and unapologetically protective of national interest.
As long as you have 500k, you can be portuguese… …maybe she needs to renounce her portuguese citizenship. Then she needs to re-enroll into GV program to understand how many years it takes to get a 1st card…
Inês Sousa Real critica os vistos gold
Inês Sousa Real, deputada única do PAN, critica os vistos gold. “Desde de que tenha 500 mil euros já pode ser português”, dispara.
She seems to be a rather irrelevant member of the parliament. Belongs to a waco party called People Animals and Nature. She’s the only member from
her party. Their whole platform is environmentalism. The irony is, the GV can help her goals by simply introducing a forest conservation pathway or something similar.
Yeah, this one is related to nationality for descendants of Portuguese.
To be fair to the parties on the left, I think it’s quite hypocritical of Chega to always talk about Portuguese nationality being for sale when they big supporters of the GV. While it’s technically a residency program, it’s the only path to PT citizenship where it’s primarily your money that gets you there eventually (as opposed to time in the country, ancestry, or marriage).
While I’m still cautiously optimistic that there will be some sort of grandfathering or carveouts added in the speciality, the left is sure to point out the hypocrisy of anything GV-specific—perhaps making it less likely to be added in the first place…
While currently quite small, PAN is still a relatively reasonable party in many ways—much more so than BE or PCP, for example. I’d say it’s the only party in Portugal that can be described as centrist. On economic issues they have a history of voting with the right, for example. They have also proposed quite a lot of legislation that eventually pass, so they aren’t that insignificant despite their single seat.
Nationality and immigration legislation will be voted down without a special vote, announces the government
At the end of a debate with moments of high tension, the Minister for the Presidency announced that the government would allow the nationality and immigration bills to go to the specialty without a vote. In other words, they will no longer be voted on today at the end of the plenary session, as had been planned.
“We will go down to committee without a vote so that, in a short period of time, there can be a discussion that unites the country,” announced António Leitão Amaro.
In view of this announcement, Rui Tavares asked the services and the board of the Assembly of the Republic to obtain the opinion of constitutionalist Jorge Miranda on this issue, reported this Friday by Expresso. Hugo Soares, the PSD’s parliamentary leader, raised his voice to accuse the Livre spokesman of wanting to “add another substantive element” at a time when the debate has already come to an end. “It’s good that the MPs understand that when the debate is over there are no extensions or penalties,” he said rather angrily.
It had already been suggested yesterday by the PS, but the PSD had refused. At the PSD caucus meeting yesterday morning, Hugo Soares had said that the aim was to force the parties to clarify their position. However, after the meeting between Luís Montenegro and André Ventura, from which the Chega leader announced an “agreement in principle”, a government source told Expresso that, in the end, they were already admitting that they would not force a vote on all the proposals, since there was not total confidence in an agreement.
It’s just news and nothing else. The parties in PT are carbon copying the US in blaming the immigrants to gain the vote banks. We have seen this during the Costa’s regime by blaming the GV’s for inflation and real estate prices. Now attacking immigrants who doesn’t know how to fight back is kinda perfect punching bag for the political parties.
The ground reality is very different as many Portuguese do believe there shall be another election soon and there’s nothing surprising about it. The present minority government is trying to push some reforms before they are booted out of power , hoping that shall help them to win the elections. Do they care about immigrants or constitution or the well being of PT citizens? Of Course not… These are career politicians relying on salaries, incentives and pensions and they are unable to get a real job which pays them to have a similar lifestyle.
For now, get your pop-corn, watch and have fun… There’s nothing we can do about it.
Sounds like there was the proposal from center right PSD, a similar proposal from Chega, and a proposal from the left which I had not heard of before. The PSD and Chega proposals were “approved” to go to a committee for further review. The left proposal was voted down outright. Is that correct?
The proposal to change the law of nationality presented by the Government went down to the specialty without a vote, with the votes against of Bloco de Esquerda and PCP. All other parties agreed that the proposal should be discussed in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedom and Guarantees, as had been advanced by the Minister of the Presidency.
The decision to lower to the specialty was repeated with the same votes for the Chega proposal on the law of nationality, but the Left Bloc proposal was struck with the votes against of the right and the PS.
Look at what’s in Ventura’s right hand
