The constitutional court ruled the Foreigner Law unconstitutional today. Note that this is NOT the citizenship law changes but rather the ones affecting mostly non-ARI visas, about family reunification and the like. perhaps a good sign of the way the wind is blowing. Tribunal declara inconstitucionais cinco normas da lei de estrangeiros - JN
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Oh, one of the things that does effect us is that the proposed law banning immigrants from suing AIMA was also ruled unconstitutional, so we will retain our rights to use the courts.
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Should I get CBI from São Tomé and Principe, get passport and apply to Portugal Citizenship as a member of a CPLC country?
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I don’t know how Portugal would handle this but Spain takes a very dim view of people doing similar with LATAM countries. They consider it fraudulent and will denaturalize people who they catch doing this.
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Rightfully so
Few other things to add from a DN article:
Regarding the privilege granted to golden visa holders and highly qualified individuals in reunification, the majority of judges found no unconstitutionality.
…
The government publicly confirmed this week that it will correct the unconstitutionalities presented by the Constitutional Court and send the law back for a vote. As last month, the PSD continues to have the support of Chega, which has secured the necessary votes for approval.In statements on the evening of Thursday, August 7, Luís Montenegro promised that, “if by any chance, the TC understands that there is some norm or some solution of some norm that is not completely in accordance with the interpretation of constitutional principles”, the majority that he represents will “accept this decision and find a legal solution that can respect the pronouncement of the TC” .
“But it must also achieve its objective. In other words, one thing is very clear: we will not give up on our goal, even if the law’s wording is amended due to the Constitutional Court’s ruling,” he emphasized. The National Assembly is currently in recess and will return to work in September.
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Yes, if you acquire that state’s citizenship you will be eligible for naturalization after 7 years instead of 10 under proposed changes, and you will be exempted from language proficiency.
It’s not necessary to have had it from the start, you can acquire it anytime prior to submitting the naturalization application. It costs USD ~100k though.
I don’t know where you’re getting that. Spain’s law advantaging Latin American citizens includes the phrase “natural born citizen of”, or something similar in Spanish. It’s not ambiguous - naturalising in a Spanish speaking country doesn’t count. So it’s pretty black and white, you’re either committing fraud or you’re not.
In Portugal’s case, I’m not sure what the CPLP laws say to that effect. If they don’t explicitly discount naturalised citizens, it might be fine.
But ideally this is a moot point and Portugal won’t screw over investors.
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Maybe this will embolden them to legislate a ‘privilege’ for golden visa holders in the nationality law reforms too … but I’m just wish casting.
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You are correct - Spain’s law specifically mentions nationals by origin, meaning in order to benefit from the shorter 2-year residency time one must have acquired the privileged nationality by origin and not through naturalization or other means. This doesn’t necessarily mean you must have held this nationality since birth if it was acquired later in life through descent for example you still qualify.
Portugal’s law doesn’t make this distinction, and it is not constitutionally allowed to make a distinction based on national origins since this would violate equality protections.
Meanwhile in the Algarve…
“But the arrival of these people (mainly young men) came so close to news that the government has to ‘rework’ its intentions over how best to control immigration that there has been a veritable explosion over social media – with many calling for the Constitution to be ‘rewritten’ so that the country does not remain at the mercy of values from another time.”
My reading of the bit about the GV is that
While it’s unconstitutional for the gov’t to increase the time required to bring your family in (as a non-GV immigrant), and it’s unconstitutional to block lawsuits and increase the time from 90 days to 9 months, it is NOT unconstitutional for the GV to have better terms for family reunification.
In effect, good for us but not a big deal, yeah?
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Per Prime Legal’s write up this is unlikely politically, the EU would also not look favorably on faster citizenship for investors.
What does the EU think about the rule of law and legal certainty? I believe we need to reframe the way people are analyzing this situation. We would not be getting more favorable terms because we are investors, we would have more favorable terms because it was promised to us and the government must keep its promises to avoid undermining the legitimacy of the democracy and rule of law.
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This does seem minor but actually very important that the TC upheld the ability to give special privileges to GV holders regarding family reunification (so long as other receive at least the basic privileges as well). Portugal's Constitutional Court Upholds Preferential Treatment for Golden Visa Investors - IMI Daily
…and less physical presence?
More likely to attract EU attention I would say.
The EU have had plenty of time to shut down the Portugal Golden Visa, and they haven’t.
I have read their write-up.
I don’t foresee any problem politically in honoring promises for existing investors (ie both holders and applicants who already applied before the new law would come into force).
And how would EU have any problem with it, if (assumingly) the new law would make it harder to obtain residence, citizenship and family reunification for everyone, including investors? If anything, they would ‘welcome’ the changes, but in reality I expect the EU will stay silent on this matter.
They should be still celebrating their Malta effort.
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Where is this write-up? I’m a client of Prime Legal and have not seen it. At least, I haven’t heard anything from them since May.
They post updates on their LinkedIn page rather than emailing all clients.
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They post updates on their LinkedIn page
THANK you! I didn’t even know they were on LinkedIn. 
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