PSD and Chega still have a long way to go to jointly approve the foreigners’ law. After the negotiations appeared to be at a dead end, given André Ventura’s statements in the last biweekly debate , Chega announced this Friday the formation of a working group, together with the Social Democrats, to “finalize the normative design of the new foreigners’ law.” Without denying, but downplaying, Hugo Soares, leader of the PSD parliamentary group, confirmed that talks are underway. According to PÚBLICO’s information, the government and the Social Democrats continue to favor André Ventura’s party for the approval of this legislation.
“Totally random” is too strong. There was one report of a wrong date earlier this year when some local AIMA offices were still issuing CDTs on demand. Recent anecdotes suggest the process now has tighter controls, which is why you have to book an appointment and then wait a few months for it to be issued.
In any case, IRN that runs the citizenship process, not AIMA. IRN will confirm whether you’ve met the legal residency requirement. IRN has direct access to the databases, so they check your eligibility themselves. The law, court rulings, and IRN’s own practice count from the date of the residence application, not the date the card was printed.
I think we’re giving CDTs too much weight. It’s become a bit of an echo chamber on the issue here, making them seem more important than they really are. CDTs aren’t required for a citizenship application and they don’t carry much legal force. At best, they’re just a paper trail for peace of mind during this period of uncertainty.
Foreigner’s Law gets voted on (again) tomorrow morning (Tuesday 30th). In today’s news…
Chega seems to be acquiescing, yet adding some new demands to save face/look tough:
president of Chega set this Monday, September 29, as a condition for an agreement on the law on foreigners that the new legislation stipulate that immigrants must have five years of contributions to be able to receive social benefits.
The Chega leader indicated that there were “negotiations and conversations between Chega and the PSD over the weekend”, but that “there is still no consensus on the law on foreigners”, because the Social Democrats "seem to reject [the proposal above]
André Ventura said that Chega has already backed down “on many things”
Meanwhile, Minister of the Presidency António Leitão Amaro considered that Chega’s demand is unrelated to the Foreigners’ Law
As in the initial version, highly qualified professionals or those with a residence permit for investment will also be exempt from any deadline to request family reunification.
IL says it will support the new proposal:
leader of the Liberal Initiative (IL) stated this Monday, September 29, that the party should vote in favor of the proposal to revise the foreigners’ law on Tuesday, as it considers that the new diploma overcomes the doubts of the Constitutional Court.
Updates from DN’s rolling blog of today’s Foreigners Law (not Nationality Law) vote.
Foreigners Law approved with Chega’s support
13:12 - Final text will have changes: It is not yet possible to know exactly the final version of the text, because changes were approved in the vote, which have not yet been published.
13:07 - Chega approves the law: Chega’s votes helped the government approve the new foreigners’ law. The IL also voted in favour. The Socialist Party (PS) and other left-wing parties voted against.
11:18 - Chega’s proposal to restrict social support is off the table: DN/DN Brasil also understands that Chega’s proposal to ban social benefits for immigrants with less than five years of residency “has not even been analyzed” and is not currently under negotiation.
10:22 - Pedro Delgado Alves… Socialist deputy… calling for the removal of the time limit for family reunification applications for golden visas. “These are proposals to comply with the Constitution,” he summarises. [I’ve tried 2 different translations, but I think this means the PS wanted to remove the carve-out for GVs]
10:22 - Andreia Galvão, the sole member of Congress from the Left Bloc, criticises the government’s proposal and attacks golden visas, which are not currently under discussion.
If the new family unification law passes and applies to Golden Visa as well, does this mean the main applicant gets the card first and the family gets it after 18 months or so? (Assuming application gets approved and the cards arrives)
Going into the vote yesterday, the GV carve-out was still there:
Unless something happened during the vote (i.e. below), I believe the carve-out remained intact.
(I’m not clear why the media don’t know everything that happens during the vote, or why they have to wait for last-minute changes to be published afterwards. Are they locked out, with the vote done in ‘secret’?)
It was a negotiation practically to the end between the PSD, Chega, PS, and the Government, and even involved the Prime Minister’s Deputy Minister, as the Socialist Secretary-General revealed. And, in the end, the agreement was with Chega. It was from André Ventura’s party—who was absent from Tuesday morning’s plenary session—that the PSD and the Government received maximum support, that is, a vote in favour, for the new rules on family reunification for immigrants and the appeal of AIMA decisions to the courts. To achieve this, however, the Social Democrats had to yield to some Chega demands, such as tightening income controls for calculating family support capacity and increasing the waiting period for reunification of childless couples and the required period of effective cohabitation.
The government has achieved what it always wanted: passing the new version of the foreigners’ law with Chega’s support. From the AD’s perspective, the ideal strategy is to lock Chega into a compromise regarding the rules for welcoming and integrating immigrants. From now on—the government calculates—André Ventura’s party will be jointly responsible for the state’s response to these citizens, and it will be more difficult to challenge it from outside the system.
As of last night, there was a document published on the Assembly’s website detailing the vote on this law, and the fact that it was finally approved with amendments. But this new approved draft law itself was not yet published (or at least I could not find it there).
…ok, this nerve-wracking exercise resumes next week.
Discussion on the Nationality Law should be resumed soon
The Nationality Law is currently undergoing hearings—or hearings—with professionals and entities involved in the matter. This process was interrupted for a few days, as Parliament is in immediate recess for municipal elections. Activities will resume next week [13-October], when meetings on the topic are also expected to resume.
The government has secured urgent approval for the proposal and has already gathered nearly all the opinions and assessments from organizations and experts
The parties agreed that the matter would be resolved before the start of discussions on the 2026 State Budget… the first debates on [which] will take place on October 27th and 28th — that is, in less than 20 days.
next week, party leaders are expected to meet to organize their agenda. This meeting will determine the date for the vote on the Nationality Law… After that, it will need to be submitted again to the plenary, where it will require a majority for approval.
As with the Foreigners’ Law, Chega will likely be the government’s main ally in this change
It’s encouraging to see they have edited the exemption clauses for the family reunification to now fully exempt ARI from the new restrictions.
If you recall, the first version that was rejected by the Constitutional Court did contain some exemption clause for ARI already, but it was not a full exemption, rather a less strict tightening of the rules (it required cohabitation etc.). Now it is a full exemption, in that nothing should change for the ARI holders in terms of their right for family reunification.
This gives us further backing to reinforce our demands for a full exemption on the Nationality Law as well.
Upon further reading, it seems there are some new requirements for renewals of the family reunification permits specifically, such as attending school for minors, Portuguese language knowledge, and no dependency on social benefits.
The reference is then made to a ‘regulations decree’ for further details.
So it is yet to be seen if any of this would apply in practice to ARI.
None of this seem too onerous anyway..
