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Comment by 3qz | Hacker News Reader

The xenophobia in this thread is shocking. Foreigners have just as much of a right to live in Portugal as people who were born there. Nobody is entitled to live somewhere just because they want to and there are still lots of affordable countries if you don’t want to put in the work

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No, foreigners don't have just as much right to live in Portugal. That's what this article is about. Foreigners need an investment visa, so they have to buy the right to live in Portugal. A literal condition is that you have to buy property over €450,000 and restore it. This selects for rich foreigners so the house value increases.

If you are Portuguese you get the right to reside in Portugal for free. Everyone else (apart from EU citizens) must buy it.

> Everyone else (apart from EU citizens) must buy it.

That's a ~440-million-person "apart from".

Yes, but the article is about people who buy property in and emigrate to Portugal through the golden visa program or D7 visa / digital nomads

I read the full article when it was posted, then skimmed it again just now. I don't agree that the article is "about" those people. It describes general issues and mentions the golden visa and D7 visa in passing as possible factors. The issues described can be caused by any inward migration of people with higher spending power. A large part of the EU has higher spending power than Portuguese locals.

I am a foreigner in Germany. I am very xenophobic and with extreme right views. Because I know many other foreigners who have almost full time jobs milking Germany’s social system. I didn’t calculate very exact numbers, but 2/3 of my earnings go for various taxes and mandatory insurances (including insane expensive public health insurance). I would say it’s really shitty deal for me financing all the immigrants and taking care of my own retirement with already heavily taxed euros.

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