Court admits to lawyers that the 800 daily actions create overload and delay actions to ensure progress in the regularization of immigrants at AIMA
Immigrants, mostly Brazilians, have resorted to the courts to ensure assistance and progress in regularization processes at the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA).
Legal actions are the guarantee that all immigrants in Portugal have that the bureaucratic processes for residence authorization follow the legal deadline in the face of the chaos at AIMA. Lawyers responsible for hundreds of lawsuits involving Brazilians, South Americans and Africans reveal that this procedure has slowed down the Portuguese Judiciary, which has been receiving around 800 lawsuits per day.
The deadline between the filing of the process and the initial order was 48 hours. Now it takes about thirty days or more. The process of an action that lasted a maximum of 45 days became unknown. Lawyer from Rio specialized in immigration, Diego Bove explains that the Administrative Court São Paulo inspector concentrates actions and is overloaded.
— According to them, the demand they have received is enormous and they are unable to keep up. Drowned them judges. An action began and ended after 30 or 45 days. Currently, the first dispatch is leaving after 20 days — said Bove, responsible for around 50 cases involving families of immigrants, most from Brazil:
--- It is absurd that immigrants contribute more than €1 billion in Social Security payments Portugal and have to go to court. But if Justice itself has no structure, it's fine more complicated.
Michele Vasconcellos, also a Brazilian lawyer in Portugal specializing in immigration, says it experienced a delay greater than the 20 days cited by Bove.
— Dispatches are coming out in at least a month. One judge or another still serves 48 hours.
I have been in the process for almost 60 days without an order. I called the Court and the talk is that they are 800 processes are filed daily and they are unable to do so — said Vasconcellos. Brazilian lawyer Caroline Campos claims that her cases have been stopped since October 10th.
— It took 48 hours from entry to the judge's initial order admitting the case and defendant's request for notification. It started to slow down in October — declared Campos. Like Bove and Vasconcellos, Campos largely handles Brazilian cases, largest foreign community in Portugal. But with the chaos at AIMA, other immigrants
they started looking for his office.
— I have family clients of Europeans who cannot get service, people with visas without automatic scheduling and who cannot get a date at AIMA — summarized Campos. When contacted, the Superior Council of Administrative and Fiscal Courts did not respond.