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.

Angola has announced the immediate visa-free entry for passport holders of ninety-eight countries. See them here.

Angola opens up visa-free access for THESE nations. Image: Pexels

Last week Angola passed a resolution to allow visa-free entry for 90-day stays to nationals from over 90 countries.

The new resolution is contained in Presidential Decree Number 189/23 of 29 September 2023.

ANGOLA VISAS

Securing Angolan visas has often involved high costs and much patience since the process incurred much red tape.

However, there has been a sudden change. Angola has now opened its borders to visitors from a large number of countries.

This is a step in the direction of opening up the country’s tourism sector.  

BOOSTING TOURISM

TRT AFRIKA states that Angola’s 90-day visa-free stay is available to visitors arriving in the country exclusively for tourism purposes.

For other types of visas such as work, study, medical treatment or residence permits, foreign nationals must apply for appropriate visas through the proper channels.

Angola’s famous tourist attractions include tropical Atlantic beaches, the Sub-Saharan Namib desert and several rivers.

NATIONALITIES INCLUDED IN ANGOLA VISA-FREE LIST: 

AFRICA

Fourteen African nations are on the list for visa-free entry. 

These include Tanzania, Eswatini, Morocco, Lesotho, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Botswana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, Cape Verde and Algeria.

South Africans have not needed visas for Angola since 1 December 2017, when a visa-abolition agreement was signed between both nations.

ASIA

There are 11 countries on the visa-exempt list from Asia. These include:

The United Arab Emirates, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Timor-Leste, China and Israel.

EUROPE

There are 35 European countries on the list. 

These are Türkiye, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the Vatican State, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Monaco, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Great Britain and Ireland.

Also included on the list are Norway, Estonia, Finland, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, France, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Cyprus, Slovenia, Iceland, Italy and Portugal.

AMERICAS

The following countries in the America’s are mentioned on the list:

The United States of America, Mexico, Argentina, Canada, Chile, Panama, Uruguay and Brazil.

In the Caribbean region, 16 countries were selected. They are Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Cook Islands, Jamaica, Kiribati and Dominican Republic.

Also exempted are Saint Lucia, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

OCEANIA

From the Oceania region, the countries that will now have 90-day visa-free entry to Angola are Fiji, Australia, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Niue Island.

ANGOLAN AIRLINE

Angola’s national airline TAAG flies from both Johannesburg and Cape Town to Angola’s capital, Luanda. The airline is also considering flights to and from Durban in the near future.

TAAG Angola Airlines flights are a favourable option for South Africa’s Portuguese community when choosing to travel to Portugal since the airline offers convenient connections to Lisbon and Porto.

9 th October 2023 South african 

The UK has recently implemented significant changes in visa requirements and fees, including the possibility of a substantial increase in the immigration health surcharge (IHS). These changes are part of the efforts of the UK government to ease the burden on its National Health. The Director of Breytenbachs Immigration Consultants, JP Breytenbach, told BizNews that  South Africans aspiring to apply for a UK visa should be prepared for higher costs and careful planning. While the changes may appear daunting, various immigration options remain available, especially for skilled workers. The UK, he said, is still pro-immigration, even though it wouldn’t always look that way.  Linda van Tilburg

Caught off-guard by new changes

It’s something that caught a lot of us off guard a little bit. The UK actually raised their fees on 4 October 2023. It’s quite a substantial increase, a lot more than we’ve ever seen in one go. The government has also, in addition to upping the fees for the processing, which they justify by saying they haven’t done so for several years and that is justified because by inflation.They want to cover the costs for processing the visas and they’re going to increase the IHS, the immigration health surcharge quite substantially. It has to go through parliament; they can’t just decide one day, this is what we want to do. There’s been a lot of pushback against this from various industry groups because it’s almost becoming prohibitively expensive to immigrate to the UK. The immigration health surcharge is a particularly vexing issue for many of our clients because you pay for it in advance for five years, for example. If the new fees come in, as they’ve suggested they will, they haven’t given exact numbers, but they have indicated percentages. It might very well cost for one individual, on an ancestral visa which is valid for five years, over £5,000 simply for the IHS fees, never mind all the other fees. In addition to that, once they start working in the UK, they don’t get a rebate. Once they start paying national insurance contributions, a large part of that goes to the NHS, they do not have the choice to elect to get private medical care or cover instead of paying the government, which I think would have been a sensible option. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. We are estimating that January will probably be the month when clarity will hopefully be given. 

Profile of South Africans applying for UK visas has changed

Before Brexit, we’ve seen a large influx of South African citizens or European passports to the UK because they wanted to make that deadline. There’s always been a push factor out of South Africa and traditionally, there’s been a very strong pull factor into the UK. The last year or so, things have been a little bit tricky with the economy. The profile of clients has changed a little bit. I personally do a lot more corporate work, our high net worth individual work. A lot of businesses are looking to expand into the UK, with market saturation in South Africa. They have a good product and believe they can compete globally and they really can if you consider  the success of many of the companies we’ve taken over to the UK over the years. But, I think we’ll always find South Africans who want to go to the UK given all the cultural ties, the historic ties and so forth. 

South Africans who want to apply for UK visa need to plan carefully

I would advise them to do so carefully and to make sure they plan things properly. We found, generally speaking, if you plan things properly, you get good advice and you’re not in a rush, then things tend to work out. The UK has changed previous options, tweaked them a little bit, and called them something new, but many of the options pretty much stay the same. To illustrate, there’s a category called the expansion worker, which used to be called the sole representative of an overseas business. The idea behind it really is you’ve got a business, let’s say in South Africa, that business wants to expand to the UK.  The company is created in the UK, a senior member of staff goes across for two years and then that company gets licensed and then you fall under the skilled worker category again, which is the premier route. So, it’s very clever in a way as you get people in the U.K. and then they go onto the skilled worker route because of course it’s easier for the government to manage that.  They’ve got all the systems to manage skilled workers. So that’s the main difference, that you now have to eventually fall under the skilled worker category. 

Skilled worker visa popular with South Africans, opportunities in entrepreneur route 

The skilled worker visa is quite a popular category with many of our clients. Another one that they’ve changed recently is the innovator founder visa. Effectively the idea is that you apply, you’ve got an innovative and scalable business idea and you then apply to what’s known as an endorsement body and that endorsement body endorses you and you can go to the UK to operate that business. Now what they’ve done, which is interesting, you used to have a minimum amount of money that you had to invest into that business. This all replaced the old tier one entrepreneur route where you used to have to have £200,000 which was reduced in effect to £50,000 and now there’s no amount needed. You can also work full-time in a capacity whilst you are getting your business up and running. 

UK Government is still very much pro-immigration 

The government in a sense is still very much pro-immigration. They have to be. What I believe makes it very difficult for the government, not in their defence, but to an extent; they had Brexit, which was an amazing upheaval. Then we had the Ukraine war, which is of course, unfortunately, still ongoing. My team and I assisted many of the Ukrainian refugees, especially in the beginning. The Law Society made a call for practitioners to do that, and we did try to do our part, but many, many other firms, of course, did their part as well. But it stopped a lot of these projects and plans that the government had for a while and we’re seeing those programmes slowly coming to the fore again. A good example is, in June last year there was a new British nationality act that came into force that had very far-reaching changes for anybody who has a claim to British nationality. That law should have come in much earlier, but because of everything that happened, it only came in quite a bit later and the processing times there are easily looking at a year, whereas for a normal processing time you’re looking at three months or so, but it is slowly getting better. The government, they really are trying their best and I think they are slowly getting ahead of their backlog that was created.

Still a lot of options for South Africans who want to live and work in the UK

If you have any British lineage, grandparents, great grandparents born in the United Kingdom, they can consider looking at the new legislation that was passed. A lot of it has to do with anti-discrimination legislation. It used to be the case that if you were born before 1983 to a British mother and she was born abroad, she could not pass on citizenship to you whereas the father could. Then that changed retrospectively. But then it was only if your mother was born in the UK, not if she was born abroad to a British-born father, because she would have been British by descent, but if she was male she could have done it. It’s a case called the case of Romaine, which is a very famous case. Then that changed and now this new Act that came in 2022, tried to expand that further. 

So, there are a lot of changes like that that have occurred, that’s definitely worth looking into. Furthermore, in planning for your children, for them to go study in the UK upon completion, they can apply for a graduate visa or a skilled worker. There are a large number of options but planning is the key thing. If this is something somebody wants to evaluate, speak to us or somebody like us, let’s make a feasible plan, and then work that plan. Then, generally speaking, things tend to work out.

90% of South Africans apply for the Sake of Children’s Futures

Some would say it’s more possible than ever before. Yes, it is expensive. However, compare that to medical aid and the cost of living in South Africa. You should do your maths. It’s a very different way of working out budgets when you live in the UK. I do believe it’s worth it if that is something you want to do, especially for your children. 90% of our clients do it for the children. Nothing’s forever. After six years, you’re a British citizen, and then you can sort of relook at everything. Possible, though, and there are quite a lot of options. The UK is still pro-immigration, even though it wouldn’t always look that way.

Thulas Nxesi, Minister of Labour and Employment, wants action against his director general for UIF investment dalliances. 

• Dysfunction and corruption are crippling the UIF, say Cosatu and BUSA.

• The heads of the UIF and the Department of Labour are now on the chopping block.

• A full audit of unlisted investments has been called for.

Both business and organised labour on Wednesday called for the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to be placed under administration and its investments investigated independently as the fund sinks deeper into dysfunction, and suspicion of corruption grows. 

The UIF is an employer- and employee-funded social security fund collected through a payroll tax on all formal sector workers. While the government does not contribute to the fund, it is administered by the Department of Labour and Employment, with business and labour playing an advisory role. 

But workers, who can draw on the funds when they become unemployed or take maternity leave, are made to wait months for benefits, if these are paid at all, due to UIF systems failure. 

The UIF sits on investments of about R130 billion, managed by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC). In its annual report this week, the PIC noted that the UIF investments had slightly underperformed against the investment benchmark. 

Cosatu, which added its voice to a statement released by Business Unity SA (BUSA) earlier in the day, now wants all UIF employees subjected to lifestyle audits. BUSA had called for the UIF to be put under immediate administration due to `systemic dysfunction`, corruption, and ineptitude.

Several of its UIF`s investments in unlisted entities have gone bad and been tainted by corruption. These include its investments in Daybreak Farms, managed by a former UIF employee, in which it invested R800 million; and Bounty Brands, which lost more than R5 billion. 

The latest scheme under scrutiny is a R5 billion `job creation scheme` in which the fund provided a grant to Thuja Capital Fund to acquire stakes in companies, which would then be pressurised to take on more employees. Thuja Capital Fund is owned by Mthunzi Mdwaba, who at the time was the chair of Productivity SA, another state entity under the Department of Labour and Employment. 

`Get-rich-quick scheme`

Minister of Employment and Labour, Thulas Nxesi, who has asked UIF commissioner Teboho Maruping and Director-General of Employment and Labour Thobile Lamati why they should not be suspended over the transaction, is believed to be in favour of their dismissal. Nxesi has handed a report to President Cyril Ramaphosa, who appoints and removes directors-general, and is awaiting his decision. 

Cosatu has described the project as a `get-rich-quick scheme` and called for decisive action against all involved. 

Apart from the corruption allegations, business and labour are angry at the serious dysfunction of the UIF and the lack of action taken to fix it. BUSA`s Nedlac labour market convenor Jonny Goldberg said three letters to Nxesi and Lamati since last November had not received a reply. 

Thousands of workers are still owed Covid-19 TERS payments and payments under the Workers Affected by Unrest (WABU) scheme put in place after the July riots. 

Cosatu said: 

Workers struggle to submit their claims and receive their payments. There are perennial queues at UIF offices across the country where workers wait in vain for days on end to have their claims processed… the issues range from an IT system that is routinely offline, to understaffed offices, overstretched employees, user-unfriendly and confusing forms and applications systems, as well as delinquent employers who pickpocket workers` contributions and fail to hand them over to the UIF.

Goldberg said that due to the constant failure of the UIF systems, when the Covid-19 pandemic began, business had stepped in to develop a parallel IT system free of charge. But the Department of Labour had rejected the offer in favour of keeping their own, and it had never been used. 

The UIF has failed to produce audited financial statements for the past two years. In a letter from Nxesi to the Speaker of Parliament published on Wednesday, the minister requested an extension to provisions under the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), which calls for annual financial statements to be tabled by the end of September. 

Nxesi said that the 2021/22 financial statements would be submitted at the end of October, while those for 2022/23 would only be ready by the end of June 2024, as the audit had not yet begun. 

The minister listed two primary reasons for the UIF`s failure. First, he said that the UIF and the companies in which it invested and had differing financial years, which made the audit difficult. 

Second, he said that the Generally Recognised Accounting Practice (GRAP) standards required by the PFMA would have `inevitably resulted in numerous audit findings and a poor audit outcome`.

This was particularly the case in auditing the unlisted entities in which the UIF has invested. His department has prepared a technical document for submission to the Treasury, proposing changes to GRAP in auditing its investments.