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Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

The Irish program was suddenly ended just this week too. Coincidence, or someone high up in the EU pulling all the strings at once?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9570w0eyeo

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What I read in RTE news made it sound like it was due to China relations, so naively I would imagine this could be US pressure more than EU. Also there is still an "entrepreneur" visa program still available I think.

Edit: here is the link: https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/0214/1356617-immigrant...

International Organizations are mentioned (which is probably code for the EU)

The EU has been pushing countries to end their golden visa programs for years, because they're widely abused by money launderers and people avoiding sanctions.

It's too bad, because I'd love to retire to a sunny country in the Mediterranean, but by the time I retire I suspect golden visa programs will have gone, and there aren't really a lot of options for visas in retirement.

Perhaps they'll be replaced with visas that don't lead to citizenship, so you can still live there but not travel on a European passport.

It's tricky, because a lot of countries see "live here for a long enough time and of course you should become a citizen" as only fair. But it might keep everyone happy.

At least in the case of Portugal, the visa usually used by retired people is the D7 visa (not the golden visa), which requires a source of income not related to your work (eg: pensions). So you still have hope!

> Coincidence, or someone high up in the EU pulling all the strings at once?

That's a pretty hilariously optimistic view of the effectiveness and cohesion of the EU.

These programs should have been blocked by the EU before entering into force. When you're part of a free-movement union, you shouldn't be allowed to create such programs without the consent of at least a majority of member states (maybe that did happen and I'm just ignorant to it), since otherwise you are unilaterally making immigration policy for the whole EU.

On the other hand, the free movement union might have taken significantly longer to establish if it started with "all citizenship and immigration laws are repealed and from now on all citizenship and immigration decisions are going to be made in the European Immigration Agency in Brussels". The EU started loose and aims for closer links over time.

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