Golden-Visa Applicants in Portugal Are Suing to Speed Up the Approval Process

Over the past few years, more and more people have been moving to Portugal to take advantage of the country’s golden-visa program. But the promise of easy citizenship hasn’t been so simple.

Hundreds of golden-visa applicants haven’t been able to get their requests approved, and now they’re suing the country to speed up the process, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Immigration lawyers told the outlet that dozens of their golden-visa clients have taken legal action against the state in hopes of getting it to meet a 90-day deadline for decisions on residency applications.

“It’s not ideal to start your relationship with the Portuguese state by going to court,” Laely Heron, an American winemaker who moved to Lisbon in April 2023, told Bloomberg. “But it seems this may be my only way out.”

Portugal’s golden-visa program allows foreign nationals to invest in the country in return for citizenship. Since it was established in 2012, it’s raised some $7.6 billion, Bloomberg noted. But due to a surge in immigration thanks to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Portugal’s Agency for Integration, Migration, and Asylum is dealing with a backlog of more than 400,000 visa applications, a small portion of which are related to golden visas. (The agency did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.)

In response to the delay, those seeking golden visas have taken matters into their own hands. Some of them feel as if they shelled out quite a bit of money to gain access to Portuguese citizenship and they’re not receiving that perk as promised. Renhai Wang, for example, paid $380,000 for an apartment in Lisbon back in 2021, and he’s still waiting for his application to be approved.

“It’s not fair that those who have paid the most to get a residency permit seem to be the last in line to get their visa,” Renhai told Bloomberg. “I just want this nightmare to end.”

He added that if he had known the process would take so long, he would have invested in a different country instead. Places like Greece, Italy, and Spain all have their own similar programs, which have also become attractive over the past several years.

For those with the money to spare, golden-visa programs may seem like a good investment—but they can also come with headaches.