Immigrants demonstrated this Monday
“We have been waiting for 8 and 6 months. We don’t want to wait any longer”, tells the participants while talking to media in front of the Agency for Integration, Migrations and Asylum (AIMA) in Sao Sebastiao Lisbon.
At issue are the long waiting times to obtain residence cards, without which these immigrants cannot return to their home country.
The protesters defend that they have the necessary papers and point to a shortage of staff or a lack of answers as the primary cause of the lengthy wait that they must endure in order to obtain their residence cards. “We have to wait, nothing else, just wait. They don’t tell us that we have this specific problem or that a document is missing, they simply tell you to wait, every time”, told the immigrants while talking to the Portugal Immigration News.
Also in February and first week of March, there were protests for the same reason with the AIMA of Faro and Portimao. While talking to Portugal Immigration News, immigrants revealed that they felt “trapped in the void” and confused by the extinction of the SEF and the creation of this new agency.
Created in October last year, AIMA means the fusion of “what were the administrative powers of the SEF and what are the powers of the High Commission for Migrations with regard to the reception and full integration of those who choose to live, study or who were forced to leave their country", explained Ana Catarina Mendes, Deputy Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, on the sidelines of the visit to AIMA Faro, on the 3th of November.
At the time, Luís Goes Pinheiro, president of the board of directors of this Agency, also stressed that the first priority established for the Agency's work was “dealing with documentation”.
After the extinction of the SEF, AIMA inherited more than 300 thousand pending cases.