“Next year, we will resolve the pending issues that remain, which due to reasons of social equity, we’ve left for last—those who pay more, the ‘golden’ visas,” stated António Leitão Amaro in parliament during the specialized debate on the Government’s proposal for the State Budget for 2026 (OE2026), justifying AIMA’s own revenue of 85 million euros in 2026.
The minister argued that “on the moral value scale,” the Government decided to “first address the poorest” and “most vulnerable,” who were the immigrants with a declaration of interest. Then, it resolved the issue of citizens from the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and “thirdly, those who were unable to visit their families because their cards had expired.”
“Only after dealing with all these did we leave the wealthiest for the end of the line,” he emphasized, underlining that “next year, a large part of the investment activity residence permits [‘golden’ visas] will be resolved, and these fees will be collected.”
Outlining the executive’s immigration policies, Leitão Amaro highlighted that “for more than a decade, there hasn’t been a government so rigorous and one that has dealt with such a heavy burden of moving from disorder, lack of rigor, and uncontrolled circumstances to rigor, order, and control, always with dignity and humanity.”
The minister indicated that 93% of issues related to immigrant regularization in the country have been resolved, asserting that “never” in “Portugal has the State, in such a short period, addressed a backlog of this scale with such speed.”
“It is the largest regularization operation, which also means security because we have controlled 500,000 criminal records, collected biometric data from these individuals, and know who they are, where they are, and what they do,” he specified.
During the final part of the debate, the Secretary of State for the Presidency and Immigration, Rui Armindo Freitas, discussed the number of pending issues at AIMA when the mission structure to handle pending immigrant processes was created in September of last year.
According to the Secretary of State, there were approximately one million pending issues, including 446,921 declarations of interest, 215,000 automatic renewals of CPLP Residence Permits without criminal record verification, 374,000 AR renewals, and 184,000 related to family reunification.
Rui Armindo Freitas also stated that “until the end of the year,” the status of declarations of interest will be “completely resolved.”
