The Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) is preparing a response to legalize around 170,000 immigrants from countries outside the European and Portuguese-speaking area with pending cases, said the Minister of Internal Administration today.
After the SEF created a portal in March to automatically grant residence permits to thousands of citizens of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) with pending cases, a solution is now being prepared for other immigrants, namely those from India, Nepal and Bangladesh, which submitted an expression of interest (application formalized with the SEF to obtain a residence permit).
"The SEF is preparing an integrated response, namely with the agency for administrative modernization and with other State institutions, namely with the Institute of Registration and Notarial Services (IRN) to seek to respond to the approximately 170 thousand expressions of interest from citizens of third countries outside the European Union and other non-CPLP countries", José Luís Carneiro told journalists at the press conference held after the Council of Ministers meeting.
According to the minister, the objective is that, by the end of October, when the process of extinguishing the SEF is completed, these citizens, who have submitted expressions of interest to the SEF from 2020 onwards, have their situation in the country regularized.
José Luís Carneiro stressed that in 2020 and 2021, during the covid-19 pandemic, these expressions of interest accumulated because the collection of biometric data to obtain residence permits implies a trip to the SEF and this was not possible due to the confinements.
As part of the SEF merger process, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) will be created, which will replace this service in administrative matters regarding foreign citizens.
In a balance made to the Lusa agency, the SEF advanced that the portal made available for granting residence permits to CPLP citizens granted more than 113,000 of these titles, with Brazilians representing almost 83% of new regularized immigrants in Portugal.