The idea was fairly simple: a person would arrive in Portugal, find a job, start paying taxes, and then apply for a residence permit while already living in the country. Not through a consulate or complicated visa schemes, but based on the fact that they were already living and working there. For thousands of migrants, this was practically the only realistic path out of the “grey zone.”

Now, that mechanism no longer exists.

And the consequences are already visible in the numbers. According to Portugal’s Judicial Police (PJ), 177 investigations into sham marriages for residence permits were opened in 2025. For comparison, there were only 3 such cases in 2022. In 2023 — 48. In 2024 — 112. This year marks a new record.

And these are only the cases where people were actually caught. How many similar situations never come to the attention of the police remains an open question.

The PJ itself directly links the rise in sham marriages to the abolition of the manifestação de interesse system. People who had already been living and working in the country but had not managed to legalize their status found themselves stuck in limbo and began looking for any possible way to solve the problem.

And this leads to a rather uncomfortable conclusion: when the state shuts down a legal pathway, the demand does not disappear. People do not simply vanish into thin air. They just start looking for alternative routes.

Almost inevitably, this means growth in the grey market, intermediaries, fake documents, and marriages of convenience like these. It’s a basic law of migration: when the official entrance is closed, ten unofficial ones appear. Material taken from https://t.me/portugal_and_me