You’re almost certain to make it under the wire. Even if the parliament meets and votes it still has to get published before it can take effect. It is highly unlikely all that is going to happen before Oct.
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This is a few days old now, but I don’t think anyone has posted it on NG yet?
Nothing new for avid readers of this thread, but goes to show that even the ‘GV experts’ differ on expectations for how bad or neutral this might turn out for us.
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Although like most IMI Daily articles, the text is not quite as catastrophic as the headline. This is the view of the most pessimistic of their “experts”:
Recouso presents the most restrictive view: “I personally think only those who already had the residency permit in hand at the moment the law was passed will be allowed to naturalize after 5 years.”
Frankly, that’s more optimistic than the average NomadGate user 
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The average NomadGate user doesn’t have residence permit in hand though 
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I’d love to, but it’s been 3.25 years since my application and still, not even pre-approval.
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3.25 years and no pre-approval. No matter how many times I hear or read things like this, each time I do I simply cannot believe how many people have fallen through the cracks. 
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I know. I mean, clearly absolutely nothing is happening to this application. It has either got lost or is being purposefully suppressed for reasons we do not know about. One things for sure: the lawyer who is handling this application has no engagement with AIMA whatsoever and the OP should get a more professional and connected lawyer to follow up and resolve this situation either way.
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We thought the difficult business was the initial application and the months-long waiting which turned into years. Never did we think that the renewals process would be this chaotic. All of these concerns are making us think long and hard about our future in Portugal. I cannot imagine going through this process every 2 years and paying €12-15000 for the privilege. The fees themselves are eye-watering let alone the perpetual uncertainty. Meu Deus…
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The worst thing is that all promoters and lawyers never mention about this pain…Did they see/know it? Yes I believe so. They are clever. It leads to the only one reason of why they never mention about it…If I write it out here, my post will get flagged and deleted 
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Very Well said @live2learn
And allow me to add, they are marketing and emphasizing that you MUST maintain you GV residency renewed even after applying, it brings fees man!
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I wanted to share the only response that I received after sending my 25 emails to the Constitutional Commission members, as @tommigun suggested:
"Thank you for your email.
I would like to let you know that the law only applies to the future and, therefore, the proceedings that were already underway are governed by the law applicable at the time the proceedings began.
Also, it was approved a special regime for people with innovative and entrepreneurial projects.
Best regards,
Cristina Rodrigues"
While this doesn’t align completely with the ARI, I had two thoughts:
- A glimmer of hope based on the first portion.
- They seem to be confused about ARI vs. the change to D8.
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I too only got one meaningful reply (plus a couple “We have received your email” acknowledgements) from the 21 who were contactable… also from Cristina Rodrigues, Deputada:
Let me clarify that the legislative changes only apply to new requests and not to those that were already underway, as seems to be the case with you.
On the other hand, we are looking into how these processes can be resolved more quickly, as there is no justification for all this delay.
As with your reply from her, it’s unclear what she means by “proceedings that were already underway” :
- only Nationality requests that were already underway (after 5 years of residency)? To many people it’s obvious that these will be protected.
- or pending ARI/GV residency requests as well?
Of course I replied asking her to clarify, but it’s been 2 weeks and nothing back yet.
When you look at how half-baked other PT legislation has been in the past (e.g. the “Application waiting time counts towards 5 years” legislation didn’t even mention ARI), I do wonder if they’re considering all the cases these changes will affect. Maybe our emails help in this regard.
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This really is the big question. What sort of requests? Citizenship? ARI renewals? All of this deliberate ambiguity is extremely emotionally draining.
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All my sympathies. From the database, the only biometrics scheduled / completed for applications later than mid 2022, seem to be the result of successful legal suits.
Our applications are June 2023, so some more time to wait. We had some hopes when the new process / resubmission of documents were started this year in Jan, but it seems that after a short burst of appointments released in April/May 2025, GV applicants were put on the backburner (again) to process the backlog of manifestations of interest.
@bclip @PTbound - thanks a lot for sharing the replies you got, and most of all for actually taking the time and effort to write your letters in the first place!
In my view it is quite encouraging to see the actual substantial replies - this confirms once again they are reading our correspondence and the seeds of doubt are progressively planted in the minds of the Deputies!
With respect to the content of the replies you received, I would not care as much about them being unclear. The proposal of the law and any subsequent changes to the wording are most likely written by some teams of legal experts hired for this purpose, while the Deputies do not necessarily have the precise understanding of how each letter of the law applies to one immigrant category vs. another.
But this is not what we want from them.
What we really want is to persistently (and consistently 
draw their attention to the unique situation (or shall we say ‘plight’) of ARI holders/applicants based on all the points previously debated in this thread, and our demands to make exemption/grandfathering for:
- 5 years residence term to citizenship
- residence term counting from the date of application.
Once the quantity of our ‘letters of concern’ inevitably converts to quality, the Deputies will simply turn to their team of ‘technical writers’ and instruct them to “make appropriate exemptions for ARI”.
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Not at all.
The relative quietness of the past few weeks is related to the summer recess of the Assembly, and the anticipation of the President’s decision on the already voted part which was the Foreigners Law change.
While it is important to keep pressure on the Deputies, it is best to act timely using the best set of arguments. For example, right now we have a Foreigners Law proposal which includes some special provisions for ARI (OK, not ideal but still the category is clearly called out).
So imaging we write today and ask them to make exemption for ARI. The Deputies will turn around and reply - we have already done it, go away.
Now imaging the Foreigners Law passes in its current form and the debate moves on to the Nationality Law. At that time we can go all guns blazing and demand the same exemption for ARI based on their own logic in the (assumed final by that time) Foreigners Law! So we could say “it’s not only what we ARI holders want, it’s what you yourselves want, Srs and Sras!”
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There is a solid legal argument to be made regarding ARI and the principle of legitimate expectations, for a large financial investment, if it ever comes to a lawsuit. I don’t think that this is a compelling and sympathetic political argument for all audiences.
Let’s consider two legal residents who are just past the four year mark toward citizenship: an ARI investor from Egypt who still works full time for the Ministry of Finance, and a construction worker from Cape Verde who lives in a pup tent across the street from the construction site. Both have sacrificed a better return on investment for those four years and both expect Portugal to hold up its side of the citizenship bargain. Both have skin in the game.
Throwing the other migrant categories under the bus can lead to counterproductive infighting, and it will probably get thrown in our faces when communicating with most Portuguese political parties. I think we’re better off partnering with other migrant categories.
My suggestion to open-minded readers: know your audience and frame your argument accordingly. PS, Livre, BE, and PCP will be more sympathetic to arguments about protecting the path of all migrants to timely citizenship–no need to bring up the ARI at all. Chega and AD may be more sympathetic to investors as a special category. IL is a mystery, under new management.
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These guys are not in power.
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How do you suggest doing this in practice? Do you have connections to those other categories? Even if may have connections, the Committee decided not to listen to any of the immigrant bodies except Sephardic Jews. I don’t know about you but for me it looks counterproductive to bundle ARI with Sephardic Jews because the former category is maintained and even provided with some protection on the Foreigners Law while the latter is planned to be discontinued altogether.
As for any other category, do you have any good argument to stand up on as compared to ARI? Investment? No. AIMA advertising citizenship to other categories? No. Severe delays of 4+ years on the first card? Still no.
So the only argument you can ‘partner’ on with other categories is general fairness and non-retroactivity, which is not a particularly strong argument on its own.
Right! Im giving serious consideration to Turkey’s program then followed up with Grenada for a nice set of passports.