The trend has a name in the investment migration industry: the “Plan B passport.”
The shift is not theoretical. It is showing up in hard application numbers across Europe’s remaining golden visa programs — and nowhere more visibly than in Portugal.
Movingto.com, an immigration advisory firm, has seen a 40% increase in American inquiries since 2023. The profile of interested parties also has changed, expanding beyond the ultra-wealthy to include tech founders, doctors, retirees, and families with young children who want a European safety net.
U.S. nationals accounted for over 30% of all investment migration applications processed by Henley & Partners in 2025, nearly double the combined total of the next five investor nationalities — Turkish, Indian, Chinese, British, and Filipino. Compared to five years ago, the volume of American applicants has increased by more than 1,000%.
Portugal’s Golden Visa program has absorbed much of this demand. According to official AIMA statistics compiled by Movingto.com, the program has attracted approximately 17,700 main applicants and over €7.3 billion in total investment since launching in 2012. Including family members, more than 42,600 people have obtained residency through the program.
The American share of those approvals has shifted dramatically. U.S. nationals now represent over 30% of all Golden Visa approvals, up from roughly 5% just five years ago, according to industry analysis. Meanwhile, the number of Americans registered as residents in Portugal reached 20,959 in 2024 — a nearly 50% increase from 2023 — with approximately 4,800 new U.S. residents regularized in that year alone, according to data from Portugal’s immigration agency AIMA.
Part of what’s driving the urgency is that the available programs are disappearing. Spain officially closed its Golden Visa to new applications in April 2025, ending a program that had attracted thousands of investors through real estate and over €1 billion annually in foreign investment. Ireland shuttered its investor visa in 2023. The United Kingdom ended its Tier 1 investor route in 2022.
Portugal itself eliminated real estate purchases as a qualifying route in October 2023 under the “Mais Habitação” housing law. But unlike Spain, Portugal kept the program alive — redirecting it toward investment funds, scientific research, cultural heritage donations, and job creation.
The result is that for Americans seeking a European Union residency pathway with minimal physical presence requirements, the options have narrowed considerably. Portugal’s Golden Visa now requires a minimum investment of €500,000 in regulated venture capital or investment funds, or €250,000 in cultural heritage projects (reduced to €200,000 in designated low-density areas). In exchange, holders need to spend as little as seven days per year in Portugal and can apply for citizenship after five years.
Greece remains an alternative, with a program starting at €250,000 in designated areas, though its minimum has risen to €800,000 in major cities. Italy offers an investor visa for €500,000. Hungary relaunched a program in 2024. But none match Portugal’s combination of a low minimum-stay requirement, a clear citizenship pathway, and over a decade of operational track record.
The “Plan B” phenomenon is not limited to billionaires. A spring 2025 Harris poll found that nearly half of all Americans — and fully two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennial respondents — expressed interest in holding dual citizenship. The most commonly cited motivation was freedom of travel, followed by “greater security and stability.” Healthcare affordability ranked as another significant driver.
At the upper end, the numbers are staggering. Henley & Partners reported that applications from U.S. citizens through its firm jumped by more than 75% in 2025, following a 400% spike in 2020 during the final months of the first Trump administration. The firm’s head of private clients, Dominic Volek, noted that Americans now outnumber the next four nationalities combined among its client base.
The demographic breakdown of American applicants tells a more nuanced story — and so does how they’re investing. According to Movingto.com’s internal client data, 96% of American Golden Visa applicants are choosing the investment fund route, with just 3% opting for cultural heritage donations and 2% directing capital toward scientific research. The overwhelming preference for funds reflects both the scalability of that route and the familiarity American investors have with managed fund structures.
The fund route is proving to be the path of least resistance for Americans. They usually understand the structure, the risk profile is manageable, and it keeps the minimum at €500,000 with no requirement to physically manage a business or property in Portugal.
Adding urgency is a significant pending change to Portuguese nationality law. In October 2025, the Portuguese Parliament approved an overhaul that would extend the residency requirement for citizenship from five years to ten years for most applicants. The Constitutional Court upheld the extended timeline in principle in December 2025 (Acórdão n.º 1134/2025), though it struck down several other provisions as unconstitutional.
As of early 2026, the legislation was vetoed by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and returned to Parliament for further deliberation. The current five-year rule remains in force — but advisors across the industry are telling prospective applicants to plan for a ten-year horizon.
For Americans already in the pipeline, the stakes are significant. Under current rules, someone who submitted a Golden Visa application in 2024 could be eligible for Portuguese — and therefore European Union — citizenship as early as 2029. If the ten-year rule takes effect and applies retroactively, that timeline could extend to 2034.
The uncertainty has created what industry observers describe as a “window of urgency,” with application volumes accelerating as investors try to lock in the five-year pathway before any revised law is enacted. Current processing times of 12 to 24 months through AIMA — Portugal’s relatively new immigration agency, which replaced the former SEF — mean that anyone applying today may not receive their initial residence permit until 2027 or 2028, making the citizenship timeline calculation even more consequential.
Several data points suggest the American migration toward European residency is structural rather than cyclical.
The U.S. passport has dropped out of the world’s top ten most powerful passports for the first time, according to the Henley Passport Index, reducing one of the traditional arguments against seeking additional nationality. At the same time, the proposed Exclusive Citizenship Act of 2025, introduced by U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno, would require Americans to relinquish any additional citizenships within one year — a proposal that, paradoxically, appears to be accelerating rather than deterring applications.
Bloomberg has characterized the trend as “The Great Continental Drift,” noting that official immigration records across Europe show surging citizenship applications and naturalizations from Americans in countries from Britain to Austria.
Portugal’s program statistics reflect this broader pattern. Even as real estate was removed and processing times lengthened due to the transition from Portugal’s former immigration agency SEF to the new AIMA, 2024 was a record year for permits issued as the backlog was cleared and fund-based investment became the dominant route.
Whether the window remains open depends on how Portugal’s Parliament resolves the citizenship timeline debate — and whether other European countries follow Spain’s lead by closing their programs entirely. For now, the data shows a clear and accelerating trend: Americans are not just thinking about a Plan B. They are executing one.
Methodology: This analysis draws on publicly available data from Portugal’s immigration agency AIMA, as compiled and analyzed by Movingto.com; internal client data from Movingto.com based on 2,500+ processed applications (2022–2025); Henley & Partners’ USA Wealth Report 2025 and Global Mobility Report 2026; a Harris poll conducted in spring 2025; and official program statistics from AIMA, CMVM, and the Henley Passport Index. Historical program data covers October 2012 through late 2024, the most recent period for which complete official statistics are available. For a comprehensive breakdown of Portugal’s Golden Visa requirements, costs, and current investment routes, see Movingto.com’s Portugal Golden Visa guide.
This story was produced by MovingTo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.