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Portuguese Citizenship Requests at All Time High
Aug 31, 2020
According to the latest Immigration, Borders and Asylum Report (RIFA) by the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service (SEF) the foreign resident population in Portugal has increased for the fourth consecutive year (22,9%), being the highest since 1976. Moreover, 2019 had the highest value of the last five years, concerning the new applications for Portuguese nationality – more than 74,000.
The Brazilian population is the main foreign community residing in Portugal (25,6% of the total of foreign resident citizens), followed by Cape Verdeans (6,3%), British (5,8%), Romanians (5,3%), Ukrainians (5%), Chinese (4,7%), Italians (4,3%), French (3,9%) and Angolans (3,8%).
The citizens who acquired Portuguese citizenship in 2019 came from Brazil (22,928), Israel (18,433), Cape Vert (6,472), Angola (2,993), Ukraine (2,738), Guinea-Bissau (2,538) and Turkey (1,629). The majority of these applications were due to naturalisation (68,9%), followed by marriage and life partnership (13,3%) and original attribution (11%).
This report also shows that in 2019, 183 citizens were granted refugee status (286 in 2018) and 113 resident permits for subsidiary protection (405 in 2018) were conceded.
Currently, Portugal is still considered by many as one of the best places in the world to invest and retire: in the first quarter of 2020, 259 main applicants and 515 dependents received their Golden Visa residence cards.
Diogo Pedro | Lawyer
It is known to the general public that the Portuguese Immigration Office (AIMA) has not been able to timely approve residency authorisation requests within the legal timeframe defined to do so, thus resulting in residency applicants having their applications on hold for months, in some cases even years. One way to tackle this inaction from the Immigration Office is to file a legal action, namely the Subpoena for rights, freedoms and guarantees of the citizens.
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