The Portuguese Government recently published its long-term strategic vision and priorities. From the proposed changes, the most controversial is the extension of citizenship time from five to potentially ten years. In this blog, we’ll dive into what they’re proposing and how we feel about it.

Firstly, it’s worth mentioning that the government programme doesn’t change the law. It’s a political plan that still needs to be implemented by parliament. Those measures will still need to be voted in by the Parliament where the incumbent government doesn’t hold an absolute majority. It’s likely that anything that makes it into law will require negotiations and agreements with other parties, which inevitably means adjustments and changes to the original proposal.

In the field of immigration, I think this programme sets out a balanced and constructive approach. It focuses on the much-needed organisation of migration flows that lead to huge backlogs and reinforces security while maintaining Portugal as an open and welcoming country to everyone that decides to move here.

The proposals also show that the focus remains on attracting young people and highly qualified professionals that were already in place through schemes like IRS Jovem and the NHR 2.0 who can contribute to Portugal’s growth and innovation.

Citizenship

The government signaled their intention to extend the minimum period of legal residence in order to request citizenship, aligning the requirements with the majority of other countries in Europe. Today, after 5 years of legal residency, you can become eligible for Portuguese citizenship. The government doesn’t mention their intended new minimum timeframe, but we expect something in the 7 year region.

The goal is to ensure that citizenship reflects genuine integration into Portuguese society, while also discouraging "forum shopping," where individuals choose Portugal primarily because it offers an easier path to European citizenship.

Integration and Language

The government believes that it is really important that migrants are fully integrated in Portuguese society. They propose introducing a requirement to demonstrate progress in Portuguese language skill when renewing certain residence permits. The idea is to prevent the creation of isolated migrant communities.

Legal Entry and Visa Policy

One of the clear priorities is to place emphasis on regulated and secure channels of immigration that require prior visas like the D7 and D8, abandoning schemes like the Manifestação de Interesse that allowed people to move to Portugal without a residency visa. In our view, this will ensure a more organised and safe process, allowing public services to respond effectively to all the requests.

The government is also planning to limit the job search visa to highly qualified individuals, which also reflects the intention to focus on highly qualified immigration.

Processing and Procedures

The proposed plan continues to prioritise the resolution of all the pending cases in Portugal’s immigration backlog with the goal of clearing these up. The main change here is to make AIMA responsible again for residence permit renewals (the same agency that issues them). Currently this sits with IRN (a separate department). This will centralise everything in one entity, reducing the need for cross-agency interactions and increasing the efficiency of the process.

Final thoughts

Overall, at Touchdown, we feel positively about these changes. In general, they seem to be well-intended and well thought out: with a focus on higher quality migration, more robust processes and increased transparency.

These changes expand existing policies that have shown good results like the IRS Jovem and the NHR 2.0: both schemes that helped Portugal become a top destination for young professionals, highly qualified workers, researchers and entrepreneurs whilst maintaining a net benefit for the Portuguese economy.

We've seen a lot of concern online and in conversations we've had with our customers. However, we don't think there's any reason to panic. Moving to Portugal will not become harder. In fact, we think the opposite will happen. Regulated migration through a visa like the D7 Passive Income Visa or the D8 Digital Nomad Visa will always be welcome and these new rules aim to make the process of moving to the country even easier.

We still need to see how this proposal will hold up in parliament and we are some time away from seeing it as policy. 

What is clear is that Portugal remains a welcoming country to everyone that wants to move here. Only the rules and processes that aim to regulate such an important pillar of society, like immigration, are stronger in order to benefit both the country and the migrants themselves.

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