This calculation includes 440,000 immigrants who are in the service phase, 220,000 CPLP citizens and 50,000 investors who have resorted to the Gold Visas. Promise is to zero pending until June 30.
More than 700,000 immigrants are waiting for residence permits issued by the Migration and Asylum Integration Agency (AIMA), equivalent to almost 7% of Portugal’s population. The calculation includes the 440,000 people who have been served in the 20 mission centers created by the Government, the 220,000 citizens of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) who have the documents expired and, now, begin to be called to replace them, and the 50 thousand investors and family members who have resorted to the Golden Visas. “This is the calculation we have in our spreadsheets, but it is very conservative,” says lawyer Larissa Belo.
Immigration experts have begun to do the accounts of the pending cases at AIMA to understand whether, in fact, the Government will be able to deliver on its promise to resolve all pending issues within the expected time. When he launched the plan for migration on July 3, 2024, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro stipulated a deadline for all immigrants to date with the documentation. However, work in this sense only began on September 9, with the opening of the first mission center of AIMA, in Lisbon.
In all, 20 centers were created to serve the 440,000 immigrants who had applied for residence through the expression of interest, an instrument that was extinguished. Most of them have already passed through the service stations, but of all those who had their residence permits approved, less than 10 thousand have received the documents they dream of so much. “Let’s get to the facts: the mission centers are about to turn six months old. People who were treated in October and November last year are only now having answers about their lawsuits. I’m not talking about the residence card,” says lawyer Rodrigo Vicente.
Therefore, Vicente points out, it is difficult to believe that all immigrants will be documented until June this year. “It is even possible that most of them pass through the mission centers, but few will have, in fact, the residence card in hand,” the lawyer said. This view is shared by lawyer Tatiana Kazan. “There are many people facing problems in meeting AIMA’s demands. And sorting out the backlog takes time. It is one thing to go through the mission centers, another, to have the processes approved and the documents, issued”, she adds. It should not be forgotten that the agency for migrations has not even managed to hire all 300 lawyers to analyze the cases.
Many bottlenecks
For lawyer Bruno Gutman, AIMA should change the work strategy in order to expedite the evaluation of the processes and guarantee the residence card within the deadline provided by the prime minister, who, on Thursday (20/02), summoned more Brazilians to emigrate to Portugal. “The agency should act on three fronts: in the first, serving relatives of European citizens; in the second, dealing with foreigners with visas; in the third, the undocumented and those with work search visas. With these groups being treated separately, AIMA would expedite the procedures, “he stresses.
In Larissa Belo's assessment, the major problem is not in the service, at the beginning of the process, although several of the people who work in the mission centers have not been prepared in the appropriate way to deal with immigrants. “The bottleneck is going on as there, when the hired lawyers come in to analyze the documentation. There, almost everything hangs. Therefore, so many people are complaining that they have done everything that AIMA has requested, but, so far, they have not seen the color of residence cards,” he points out.
There is another point that needs to be taken into consideration: by law, mission centers can operate until May 31. That is, with these posts closed, all the work will again focus on the traditional agencies of AIMA. But those who know the service history of these agencies are left with both feet behind. In Tatiana Kazan’s view, it will take a change of culture to prevail for respect and dignity in relation to people who depend on the public agency to resolve their pending issues.
CEO of the Portuguese Alliance, Fábio Knauer recalls that AIMA’s work needs to be completed by the Casa da Moeda, which was contracted to print the plastic residence cards. He says he does not understand why so much difficulty for the cards to reach those who are in law. “When a person goes to a bank and opens a checking account, in a matter of days, the debit and credit card arrives at their home. The same should be the same with the residence cards.” For him, it is difficult to understand the reasons for so long.