I think we urgently need to place an article in Portugal that discusses this bait and switch on GV citizenship as a prime example of broader systemic issues of investing or doing business in Portugal.
Quote: “Portugal has gotten significantly WORSE since we started making investments in the country. If the trend continues, we’ll stop investing. And if you’re considering it as a tech firm, you’d be crazy to without some hard reassurances from the government.”
I think less politicians or the public will care about the GV people. It’s more what this signals to anyone looking to invest in Portugal. This will further spiral the reputation of Portugal.
Thanks for the suggestion and for your advice. I’m thinking along these lines as well but part of me thinks that an open-ended fund while allowing greater flexibility would be susceptible to a higher GV market risk as in case of a non GV friendly outcome, a load of investors could potentially cash out at the same time and as a result, the fund could go under. On the other end, a closed ended fund would mean you don’t get to have the flexibility of calling it quits whenever you want but at the same time, you are exposed to a lower risk in case things do go south.
The concern about everyone liquidating open-ended funds is overblown.
Take IMGA, the largest. When I last looked, it has a maximum of 1.1% of the issued shares of any of its portfolio companies, and an average of 0.4%. Suppose it’s entirely composed of ARI applicants (it’s not) and everyone files a redemption notice on the same day (they wouldn’t). It would only take IMGA a couple of weeks to pay out most of the redemptions, assuming they take it gently and only account for 20% of market volumes.
ARI redemptions aren’t going to crash any open-ended fund invested largely in PSI-20 stocks, and they aren’t going to crash the Portuguese equity market.
That’s a tough one. What exactly is your current situation? Have you put any money in yet at all? If zero, I would be inclined to warn you away from the programme…
Yeah that is true, it is highly unlikely to have a scenario where everyone pulls out at the same time and that collapses the fund. This is especially true if GV investors are a very small percentage of the total investors of a particular fund which as you say, is usually the case.
It’s true that the current nationality law does not distinguish between different types of residence permits. But there’s no legal reason why an amended nationality law could not contain provisions maintaining the status quo for ARI holders.
It’s not exploiting the eligibility. If someone wants to inject 500k to help the Portuguese economy and they have lived there for 5 years it’s reasonable to expect some benefit for that investment above and beyond what you can otherwise get for nothing as a D7, D8, MoI, asylum seeker, etc.
If anything, Portugal is exploiting investors by continually thrashing them.
I understand you have your agenda and your position, but it might not hurt for you to look at it from the perspective of people who are investing a ton of money into your country, paying huge amounts of taxes, and really getting nothing in return (most don’t use healthcare, social security or public services). ARI holders are essentially like permanent tourists with regard to the economic effects but spending a lot more money on hotels, government fees and taxes. Maybe you dislike tourists also, but there is no denying the country depends on them for income and economic stability.
We can probably agree that most of these problems are of the governments own creation. They created the MOI, and the Sephardic nationality law, CPLP and the job seeker law that brought in so many people in an unsustainable manner. By comparison, there are relatively few ARI applicants and most of the ARI holders I have met want to integrate to Portugal and help make it a better place.
We’ll have to wait and see, but definitely it will a bit of physical presence required as opposed to the old CBI where you only had to visit on two occasions because that point was relied upon in the court ruling.
I don’t see why people keep repeating the lie that immigration was at unsustainable levels.
Maybe AIMA couldn’t keep up but that’s the fault of crappy bureaucracy, not some inherent limit on how fast society can accept new members. Same goes for other Portuguese institutions
It’s a little more complicated than that. Your lawyer is correct but the fact they sit in different pieces of legislation is not an argument. Laws are often considered in relation to each other even when separate.
They said that na sua atual redação must be considered in light of non-retroactivity and legal certainty, both of which are embedded in Portuguese legal codes. But added that without seeing the final version of the law and understanding how it would apply to my specific situation, any interpretation at this stage is still speculative.
And for what it’s worth, in my experience, I’d caution anyone getting worked up about one-line answers from lawyers about the meaning of specific legal terms. That’s not especially helpful. There’s a big difference between understanding what a phrase generally means and how it functions in a particular case. The detail always matters. You’re not going to get a full argument on this forum.
Well, it’s a rather one-sided view as it fails to mention in what sad state most properties were prior to revitalisation of real-estate investments that GV programme has brought. It also fails to mention just how much intra-European migration to Portugal occurred once it has been “discovered”.
But it is interesting to see how the plagues of Portugal are being portrayed to the general public. Thanks for posting.
The YouTube channel is from Mexico, which has also been “discovered” by Americans . The video was posted 7 days ago, so it probably reflects the sentiment on the ground that led to this:
. The video was posted 7 days ago, so it probably reflects the sentiment on the ground that led to this: