Hi, I live in Portugal but I haven’t had any luck getting this. So theoretically, you’re supposed to be eligible. In practice, you can’t get one without a NISS (social security number), which itself you can’t get unless you have a local work contract - the rules for a NISS were changed early last year. So if you’re here off passive income or work income from abroad (which would be 99.9% of us, I’m sure), the answer is effectively no, because one of the requirements is unfulfillable.
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Thanks @sj-to-pt Useful clarification. It’s odd you can’t get a social security number in Portugal without a work contract. What about people who are self-employed? In the UK you only need to have the right to work.
Yes, the self employed can also get a NISS but everything is so intertwined here that to prove you are self employed you would have to have issued and provide copies of legal invoices “Recibos Verdes” which means you are already declaring the income for income tax purposes and are also paying for a business bank account and other regulatory things that I can’t remember. In other words, being self-employed here is also a bureaucratic and costly tangle that put me off starting a small business to take up some of my leisure time. It’s not a country where you can just do some work, get some money, and declare it as income on your annual tax return. I guess that there’s a history of rampant tax avoidance that has led to this stringent control (while acknowledging that the grey market here must still be thriving if you can tap into it).
I do that to call it out as bull. As Jack and I have both noted, IMI Daily is the spiritual home of GV promoters… it’s important for those of us who’ve experienced the reality of the PT GV to provide, well, a reality check.
Speaking of GV promoter bull, this from Suncap Visa in my inbox yesterday:
We believe that the arguments presented in favour of grandfathering existing applicants are strong and have a good chance of success. This means that those who apply for residency (including GV, D7, D8) between now and when the law in its final shape passes have a very good chance of benefiting from the current rules (5 years to citizenship, counted from the date of application).
Reality check: “chance of success” is probably more like 40% at best - so not zero, but certainly not “very good.” The Government will fight hard and perhaps dirty to not grandfather hundreds of thousands of MI/CPLP/D*/GV/etc., otherwise their changes will have little near-term effect (all that politicians care about). But the PT GV industry needs this false hope to survive and keep all those “Plan B” recruits coming in.
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I second that - I’ve been trying to get a NISS for weeks. Each time I provide the requested information / documentation an additional requirement is introduced or an existing one amended.
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Thanks @richn4. Great further update.
This forum is very useful for cross-checking all the exaggerated and misleading claims made by various investor visa companies/agencies that obviously have an incentive to present the best possible gloss on everything and omit inconvenient details that might put off a potential investor. I would always recommend cross-checking everything first, whether with your independent Portuguese lawyer (ie one that specialises in the PT GV and immigration to Portugal) and/or via other actual investors who have been there and can provide a bit of additional fact/reality checking. I wouldn’t rely on information provided purely by these agencies who are essentially just sales people for GV services.
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If you’re doing that just to make the renewals portal happy (?), the NISS bug may have been fixed.
I think the court would be more likely to entertain a brief/letter/submission (whatever the required form here is) from a Portuguese lawyer representing a bunch of GV investors, than a bunch of individual letters from GV investors themselves. (I may just be projecting here, but lawyers are always going to be more attentive to other lawyers who speak their language and share their analytical frameworks than to non-lawyers.) We do have unique interests at stake that no one in the political process can really be expected to advance. For example, the biggest hurdle I see on the grandfathering bit is the argument that the law on foreigners is over here and the law on nationality over there and they aren’t connected. While that’s not really true for anyone (anyone making this big life decision has to take the timeline into account), it is especially not true for us. When the government invited us to accept the trade off of a subpar investment in exchange for citizenship, they necessarily tied the two laws together. Any rational investor necessarily would have to weigh the stream of expected returns over a defined period to decide if the tradeoff was worth it. In addition, an investor would layer in lack of liquidity discounts, which also directly depends upon the length of time of the tie up. No other affected group can make that argument as clearly as we can and no other group can so clearly show “investment-backed” expectations (which are entitled to stronger protections, at least in common law systems). Anyway, I’d be willing to pay my share of the cost of hiring a lawyer (maybe the people at the firm that did the recent webinar on the topic for Nomadgate) to do some sort of filing making just the points that are unique to us if there are enough others interested in doing so as well. Maybe they could even get their fellow immigration lawyers to sign on.
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Thanks. Yes, I am ( was) doing in prep for renewal 
What is the practical way of achieving this in the one or two weeks max? Beyond that it would be too late I suppose as TC has up to 25 days to deliver their advice.
Do you have a legal firm willing to cooperate?
I imagine if there is something to be done, PAIIR would already have done it.
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PAIIR making sure that the TC sees Jorge Miranda’s analysis is probably the only thing that needs to happen, if it’s even possible. I can’t imagine anything else being more valuable.
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I emailed Liberty Legal. I will let you know what they have to say. If you want to send a similar email to another good, think-outside-the-box law firm (like maybe the one of the other presenter), I can DM you what I sent for you to customize. I think you are right that realistically we only have until the President of the Republic’s decision to get anything before the judges. And, we may not have any way to get in front of them at all–I’m definitely not saying that is a thing that I know. A further note, I do not agree that PAIIR is completely aligned with us, especially on the grandfathering issue. In fact, their incentives might run a bit in the other direction–(1) grandfathering does nothing for attracting future (vs existing) investors/immigrants and (2) extending the periods we are stuck applying for a string of visas and holding/switching our investments only lengthens their revenue streams.
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The lawyer Andre Miranda (son of Prof Jorge Miranda) said the other day on WhatsApp that the PS petition (which he seems to have seen) refers specifically to the Miranda legal opinion, and that it includes a link to the Assembly website page where the Miranda opinion can be found.
The Miranda opinion does refer at a couple of points to ARI applicants as a group. I feel sure that in drafting her report, the Rapporteur will read the Miranda opinion in full.
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Yeah, I ran into this issue myself a year ago. However it’s really not that complicated to register as self employed and issue one or two recibos verdes before closing the self-employment activity again. With that you can request the NISS online, and with that in hand you can request the EHIC.
But this really only applies if you are living in Portugal, so I don’t see how someone who doesn’t live in Portugal would qualify. After the rules changed last year I’d say an EHIC requires you to live in the country, it doesn’t “come included” with a GV residence card alone.
Just to clarify—“work income from abroad” is a very concept narrow, essentially work you perform while outside Portugal. If you are performing work (earned income) while living in Portugal (even if remotely for a foreign legal entity), you should still be registered either as self-employed or an employee in Portugal, which would make you liable to SS and hence eligible for a NISS.
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There’s a caveat on the social security liability. Many countries have totalization agreements, e.g. there is one between the US and Portugal, that in some circumstances make your social security liabilty payable in another country. The exact terms vary, but if you are seconded to Portugal for limited period of time, you will often qualify. So it’s possible to work in Portugal and owe income taxes there while continuing to owe social security to your home country and thus not qualify for a NISS.
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I could also contribute to this effort if this can not achieve on time.
On the factual front, ARI specific issue (e.g. investment-backed expectation) is not raised by PS petition. I would imagine this will not be considered by TC under this preventive review. And ARI holders may need to launch a separate case if the outcome from PS petition is not satisfactory.
I don’t suppose you know the answer to this one. Say you’re a director (manager in Portuguese parlance) of a Portuguese company), getting a fee, and therefore paying tax and social security - but are living outside PT. Would you qualify for a NISS?
AD doesn’t seem to have any qualms about trying to influence the TC.
erm… it’s not “politics” honey… unconstitutionality is grounds for unconstitutionality 
Nationality Law: AD tries to dismantle PS arguments before the Constitutional Court.
The PSD and CDS parties have submitted statements to the Constitutional Court to dismantle the review requested by the PS regarding the Nationality Law. “Political differences are not grounds for unconstitutionality,” they argue.
With the aim of “providing the learned Constitutional Court (TC) with the arguments that support the constitutional conformity of the reviewed norms”, the PSD and CDS parliamentary groups sent two pronouncements to the judges of the Ratton Palace attempting to dismantle the arguments of the socialists in the request for preventive review. The AD considers that what motivated the socialists were “political differences” and not any potential unconstitutionalities.
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Every time I see something like this I feel like Bill Bixby in the Incredible Hulk. “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
What a load of absolute rubbish. Naked partisanship and politicking at its finest.