The government will present its plan for migration next Monday, at a time when demand for residence permits has soared, causing problems in the management of services.
According to a government source, the plan will be presented on Monday afternoon, after a council of ministers on the subject.
In October last year, the previous government created the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), abolishing the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) and the High Commission for Immigration, a decision that was criticized by the PSD, then in opposition.
In recent weeks, queues have built up at AIMA offices and it is estimated that there are 350,000 cases still to be settled.
On the other hand, there is a serious lack of human resources at AIMA, which is set to worsen with the departure of around a hundred employees.
According to a report by the agency, published today by Expresso, on the recovery of backlogs at the Aliens and Borders Service (SEF), which was drawn up this month, the new agency started work in October 2023 with only 714 employees – 41% of the contingent of extinct agencies that would have been available.
The document states that there was “a net reduction in the total number of staff, due to the departure of several workers, which was not compensated for by the entries that have taken place in the meantime”.
Expresso also quotes the report, stating that AIMA points to the existence of at least 459,384 ongoing processes as of October 29, 2023, the majority (344,619) of legalization through expressions of interest (for immigrants who are already in Portugal, without the need for legal entry into the territory).
“This does not include, for example, applications for ‘gold’ visas, residence permits for students or those made as part of family reunification,” it adds.
In the report, AIMA also recognizes that “it is not possible to identify the number of pending cases in a simple and reliable way” with the information in the databases.
AIMA speaks of the “obsolescence of the technological infrastructure” which required “significant corrective and maintenance interventions to ensure responsiveness and minimum standards of cybersecurity and information security”.
Last week, the government announced that it was going to review the institutional model for monitoring immigrants, calling the way AIMA replaced the now-defunct SEF a “blunder”.
“Portugal had an institution, the institution was eliminated, its human resources were distributed among various institutions,” a decision criticized by various parties and organizations, said the Minister of the Presidency.
António Leitão Amaro promised the announcement of measures for the sector for “the coming weeks”, including a “correction also in the institutional field”, without committing to the maintenance of AIMA.
