Portugal's golden visa leads to citizenship

A great deal of uncertainty has always surrounded the question of whether participants in the Golden Visa programme will eventually, after receiving a temporary golden visa for 5 years, be able to apply for a) permanent residence and b) citizenship.

But the first golden visa holders to complete their five-year residency period in Portugal have emerged, and they confirm that participants in the Golden Visa programme are granted citizenship after physically residing in the country for just 35 days.

How do you interpret that

The rules stipulate that an individual must have resided in the country legally for five consecutive years in order to obtain a residence permit. Until recently, only those who had a residence permit for at least one year could apply for citizenship, which meant that an investor had to wait up to six years to apply.

That rule changed in July, however, when Portuguese lawmakers amended the country's citizenship law to allow anyone who has lived legally in Portugal for five years to apply for citizenship.

But the question that no one had a clear answer to was, how does the Portuguese government define 'legally reside'?"

Did it mean simply having a residence permit for five consecutive years? Or - that the holder of the residence permit had lived most of the time in Portugal during the previous five years, i.e. physically resided in Portugal?

Since the programme was only rolled out in earnest in 2013, no one knew the answer for sure until early to mid-2018.

An uninspiring precedent

The UK precedent was a cause for concern. Their residence in return for investment programme, the Tier 1 investment visa, was the only investment visa programme in the EU that existed long enough for its participants to reach the permanent residence/citizenship stage.

UK policy on this issue has not given participants in the Portuguese programme much cause for optimism. Although Tier 1 investors are eligible to apply for a residence permit after five years - or two under the accelerated regime - they are only eligible if they have been physically resident in the UK for at least six months during each period of the five years. In addition, the spouse of the principal applicant also falls under this criterion.

The requirements for citizenship in the UK are even stricter; an applicant must not have been physically absent from the UK for more than 450 days in the five years of residence and no more than 90 days in the year immediately preceding the application for citizenship.

Moreover, contrary to the CoML criteria, the record of residence time is kept for each family member individually, which means that only those family members who have fulfilled the physical residence requirement are eligible for citizenship.

In light of this precedent with the golden visa in the UK, there has never been certainty about Portugal's position on this issue.

I can't think of a better outcome

Fortunately, there are now real examples to show that participants in Portugal's Golden Visa programme do not just qualify for permanent residence and citizenship, but do so after spending just 35 days in the country in the last five years.

Speaking to Investment Migration Insider, João Cunha Vaz, senior partner at EDGE International Lawyers in Lisbon, confirmed this favourable development.

The reality is that at this stage we already have several clients who have changed their temporary residence permit to a permanent residence permit, having fulfilled the minimum requirements for stay. (João Cunha Vaz)

Thus lawyers confirm that those who are now applying for citizenship are doing so on the basis that they have only spent 35 days in Portugal.

It should be noted, however, that the firm's lawyers have also pointed out that basic knowledge of Portuguese remains an unyielding criterion for citizenship.

The requirement to know Portuguese is fundamental. (João Cunha Vaz)

After the first five years of holding a golden visa, the requirements for applicants to physically reside in Portugal cease to apply.

A new category of permanent residence has also recently been created, which allows the applicant to obtain a permanent residence permit without having to fulfil any minimum stay requirements in Portugal. This category entitles the applicant to reside for five years (renewable every five years) and does not impose any minimum residency requirements.

The investment migration industry could not have hoped for a better outcome of the long wait. Therefore, participants and applicants of the Golden Visa can be happy that there are no more uncertainties with the interpretation of the law.