SA Migration International

News Articles

Portugal: An official goodbye to golden visas

Source: The South African, 09/10/2023

Portugal has now closed its golden visa scheme for real estate investors, which helped many foreigners move to the Western European country.
Portugal terminates golden visas. Image: Lorne Philpot
Portugal has put an end to its sought-after residence permit for real estate investment activities (also known as golden visas). The new law governing this comes into effect today, Saturday 7 October 2023.
INVESTMENT SCHEMES
Portugal attracted large numbers of expat residents to its shores by offering investment visas (golden visas) to foreign nationals who purchased real estate.
Portugal became home to scores of Americans, Chinese, Israelis and other nationals who found La Dolce vita (the sweet life) in that country.
The golden visa programme was an easy way for foreigners to buy into the Portuguese lifestyle through property ownership.
NEW LAW
Portugal News reports that new residence permits for investment activities, known as golden visas, will no longer be accepted.
The law states that this takes effect from Saturday 7 October.
“New applications for residence permits for investment activities are not accepted”, the law states, per Portugal News.
EXISTING PERMIT HOLDERS
Foreign nationals who are already in possession of Portugal’s golden visas are periodically required to renew their authorisations, to retain their right to legally remain in Portugal. However, the new ruling will not affect these individuals.
“These authorisations have been granted under the legal regime applicable until the date of entry into force of this law”, the document states.
This also applies to the granting or renewal of residence permits for family reunification.
BANNING INVESTMENT VISA SCHEMES
Last year the European Union raised concerns about golden visa programmes offered by several member states.
The European Commission called on EU governments to end national programmes that sell citizenship to investors (also known as golden passports schemes) and urged them to suspend the sale of visas to Russians and Belarusians.
The move was a push from the European Parliament. It was an attempt to regulate the multi-billion-euro citizenship and visa industry, which the EU considered a security risk.
ALLURE OF PORTUGAL
For several years the European country was the talk of the town, attracting surprising numbers of South Africans.
The Western European country was not only popular for South African expats seeking a peaceful life but for large numbers of foreigners from several countries.
STANDARD OF LIVING
Migrants to Portugal often speak of safety, good health care and education, reliable water and electricity supplies and excellent road networks.
Not to mention the mobility to travel in Europe due to the fact that Portugal is a member of the European Union.

Search

Latest News

An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail. Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells.... Read more...

There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers.... Read more...

North Korean hackers have been exploiting the updating mechanism of the eScan antivirus to plant backdoors on big corporate networks and deliver cryptocurrency miners through GuptiMiner malware. Researchers describe GuptiMiner as `a highly sophisticated threat` that can perform DNS requests to the attacker`s DNS servers, extract payloads from images, sign its payloads, and perform DLL sideloading. Delivering GuptiMiner via eScan updates In a report released today, cybersecurity company Avast says that the threat actor behind GuptiMiner had an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) position to hijack the normal virus definition update package and replace it with a malicious one named ‘updll62.dlz.’... Read more...

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19... Read more...

DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications.... Read more...

Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before.... Read more...

Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17... Read more...

In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin.... Read more...

The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. The lost hours are largely due to system downtime, surpassing load-shedding. In the 2022/2023 financial year, where we experienced extensive load-shedding, system downtime was the cause of 41 691 hours lost (17 years), whereas load-shedding caused around 9 322 hours lost (4 years) at DHA civic offices on the production of smart IDs.... Read more...

JOHANNESBURG - Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi said that while the White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection had been gazetted, there were amendments that needed to be made to the legislation before it could be passed into law. The White Paper is proposing an overhaul of the country`s migration laws, with the aim of tightening rules around allowing migrants into the country.... Read more...