Portugal righting wrongs: residency wait time now counts towards nationality
Portugal has just provided an extraordinary, relevant, and much-desired sign of lucidity! After a period in which the country became progressively less appealing and reliable for residency and citizenship planning, Portugal has finally taken a measure with real impact.
Over the last three years, the country has used COVID, the Ukrainian conflict within Europe, and the restructuring of its immigration authority to justify an unbearable delay in visa processing, particularly impacting Golden Visa applications. All measures taken so far have been timid and insufficient. Judicial proceedings have become applicants’ favorite instrument to force authorities to proceed with their processes, creating a new focus for clogging up unanswered requests, this time in the courts.
Now, Portugal asserts that none of this time was wasted. Applicants’ resilience will be rewarded, considering that this immense waiting time is included in the nationality count. This means nothing more than the quickest Golden Visa with a ticket to an EU nationality just got faster and probably more competitive than ever.
The clock has already started ticking, and for all those who wait and despair for the outcome of their processes, have no fear, as this time that seemed lost is time gained in the journey to nationality.
Soon, with the publication of the new law and its consequent entry into force, the residence time for nationality purposes will begin to be counted from the moment residence is (and was) requested. Certainly, the wording of the law will still be heavily interpreted, and the law itself needs to be regulated, focusing particularly on the means of proving these requirements, but the essential is already achieved — the clock is ticking.
In practice, this change responds to the concerns of many people and solves some latent problems that would reveal themselves sooner or later, such as the case of applicants with adult children who want to begin their economic independence without losing eligibility for nationality or investors who are dependent on funds with strict deadlines and a restricted lifespan.
However, it must be noted that there are still a number of people whose problems remain unresolved. A significant part of visa backlogs is related to the Golden Visa. International investors, with a reduced physical presence requirement in the country, manage to be eligible for nationality as well.
There has always been a prejudice against these investors that can only be justified by ignorance, thinking that these people do not want to live in Portugal. However, the truth is that many of them do. While it’s true that many chose Portugal as a plan B, an exit strategy, or a long-term future plan, many also chose Portugal to live their lifestyle, for their children to study, and to start a new chapter in their lives.
We accept this achievement with joy — it is a wonderful sign. Still, we cannot ignore that delays continue to be unacceptable, and many people with expressions of interest, family reunification requests within the country, and Golden Visas want to live in Portugal, make a normal living crossing the border, and are unable to do so as they are in the middle of thousands of pending applications.
