The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) begin a task force today (09/09-2024) to try to resolve the more than 400,000 pending cases of immigrants trying to regularize their situation in Portugal.
According to the agency, requests from people who have been working in the country until June 3, 2024 will have priority in this first stage. Some of them received messages from AIMA asking them to send all their documentation online. Now, everything will be checked by workers from the association who have been trained, including in the collection of biometrics.
“In order to resolve the more than 400,000 processes pending analysis, with a view to regularizing those who were already working in Portugal until June 3, 2024 and who meet the legal requirements to obtain a residence permit, an integrated and robust logistical operation will be necessary. The opening of the first AIMA Missionary Structure Service Center is currently underway, at the Hindu Center, in Lisbon”, informs the agency, in a note.
According to the same statement, the Hindu Center will be open from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. “In addition to having employees from AIMA itself, (this work) will also involve employees from civil society organizations that have already received technical training from the Security Forces and other competent authorities. In total, the AIMA Missionary Structure Service Center will have the work of more than a hundred people every day,” adds the organization responsible for serving immigrants.
According to experts, although the task force is far from being enough to bring order to AIMA, it will be a good start. “I welcome this initiative,” says lawyer Elisa Hachem, who works with immigration. For her, however, the government needs to quickly extend the task force to other locations with high population density, such as Porto, Coimbra and the Algarve, so that the pending issues can be resolved more quickly. “It is not advisable to centralize everything in Lisbon. There are many people in the same situation in other places. We hope that the government will extend the services in October, as has been promised,” she adds.
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In addition to the Hindu Center, which is located in the Telheiras neighborhood, AIMA has specified the services that will be available at some of its branches. At the Anjos branch, for example, immigrants will be personally served to provide information. At the branch located on Avenida António Augusto Aguiar, next to Parque Eduardo VII, employees are instructed to only receive applications. At this same branch, in the afternoon, residence permits that have already been issued will be delivered. Elisa reminds that citizens who received emails with appointments for September 2024 at other AIMA branches, outside Lisbon, must appear with the documents at the indicated locations and at the specified times.
Given these definitions, both Elisa and Fábio Knauer, president of the consultancy Aliança Portuguesa, recommend that people do not go to AIMA offices if the requirements are not met. There will certainly be frustration and turmoil, which is not desirable on the part of the Government, which has made a public commitment to resolve all pending processes by June 2025. According to the authorities responsible for immigration, everything is being done to regularize AIMA's operations.
“Ideally, the government would have used technology to speed up the resolution of pending issues at AIMA, which have been dragging on for years,” says Knauer. The agency replaced the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) in October of last year. The agency has already accumulated more than 300,000 cases, a situation that has only worsened in recent months. “We see that many banks that operate primarily online can easily perform recognition, digitize documents and verify the veracity of information via cell phone. In a matter of days, the bank card is at the customer’s home. Why can’t AIMA adopt these systems?” he asks.
The president of the Portuguese Alliance also believes that the government could have outsourced the services, since it would not need to mobilize so many personnel and could monitor and charge companies that were hired through bidding. “In this model, AIMA would only enter the last phase, the final verification of documentation and the issuance of residence permits. I have no doubt that the work would be more agile, especially because companies invest in technology and artificial intelligence,” he says. “Unfortunately, the Portuguese government is very behind in terms of technology when compared to private companies,” he adds.
The delay in resolving pending cases by AIMA has caused many problems for immigrants, many of whom are in vulnerable situations and exposed to all kinds of exploitation due to a lack of proper documentation. “You only have to look at the queues that form in front of AIMA agencies to see the faces of despair. There is a lot of misinformation, uncertainty and insecurity,” says Knauer. “We hope that this time the government will really be able to resolve all the problems affecting immigrants,” adds Elisa Hachem.