Contacted by Lusa on the occasion of AIMA’s two-year anniversary (October 30, 2023), PSD, IL, and Chega acknowledged that the institution faces numerous problems, attributing these to the socialist management that led to an exponential increase in immigrants. Meanwhile, PS, Livre, and CDU accused the government of setting the agency up for failure through erroneous policies and lack of investment.
“It is impossible to discuss the AIMA as it was two years ago, or its current state, without addressing the whole process that led to its creation, the terrible way the SEF ended, with administrative agony and incapacity to make effective decisions following the near destruction of the border control system,” said António Rodrigues, a social democrat, to Lusa.
The functions of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) and the High Commission for Migrations were merged into AIMA, which inherited approximately 400,000 pending regularization cases, mostly related to expressions of interest—a mechanism allowing foreigners who entered Portugal with a tourist visa to regularize their status.
“There was no administrative mechanism to manage the scale of the problem, and what we had to do was resolve the pending issues and play catch-up,” the social-democratic deputy explained, considering that AIMA “has a negative image because it was born flawed,” despite its “essential responsibility in people’s lives.”
The government approved a mission structure to support document regularization and renewal, but Chega believes that enforcement is inadequate and calls for strengthening the “control aspect” of migrant oversight by creating a body with “migration inspection powers.”
In a written statement, Chega calls for a “revision of family reunification criteria” and improved institutional coordination and resource allocation to ensure that AIMA has adequate human, technological, and logistical resources.
Socialist Pedro Delgado Alves argued that the government never managed to resolve the issues: AIMA “was severely punished by the troubled creation process, being born in the aftermath of the pandemic, and also inherited a significant weight of cases pending from the SEF,” but later, the “current government took steps that made the situation even less manageable and explainable.”
The creation of a mission structure to address the pending cases did not “create muscle” within AIMA, and there is an ongoing lack of “human and financial resources to provide regular responses to immigrants.”
An example occurred in recent weeks, when the automatic extension of documents for regular immigrants in Portugal ended, leading to “a flood of people” seeking services due to a lack of responses through other means, the socialist deputy accused.
In statements to Lusa, Rui Rocha (IL) stated that Portugal experienced “two bankruptcies, a financial one with José Sócrates and a migratory one,” with the “expressions of interest and border control failures” leading to the “collapse of the administrative control model” for immigrants.
AIMA “was created with a heavy burden it could not overturn,” and the country saw “a legislative shift towards more restrictive laws,” amid various administrative and judicial issues, with “administrative courts having over 130,000 cases due to response incapability.”
Nonetheless, regardless of the existing law, “there is no excuse for the Portuguese state to persist with the administrative system’s failure” at AIMA, which “does not answer calls, provide services, or address simple issues” concerning immigrants, leaving “people in limbo,” the liberal deputy further accused.
Paulo Muacho (Livre) recalled that AIMA’s creation had “a positive goal,” which was to separate administrative and criminal matters.
However, “this reform was executed in a way that did not succeed because, from the outset, the necessary means for AIMA to perform its work, whether human or technical resources, were not provided,” stated the deputy from Livre.
Simultaneously, the “recent legal changes,” such as those to the nationality or foreigner laws, “are a shot in the country’s foot, as they will hinder economic growth” and obstruct AIMA’s success, despite the institution receiving more funding in the next State Budget.
The country “has closed all legal immigration channels,” yet the “economy still needs labor,” and the solution will be resorting to those who arrive “irregularly, risking falling into human trafficking networks,” warned Paulo Muacho.
In a written response, the PCP recalled its opposition to the abolition of SEF and described the creation of AIMA as “a hasty process, extended over time,” where “conditions, means, and resources pertinent to its assigned competencies have not been guaranteed” to date.
The communists summarize by stating that “the creation of AIMA did not correspond to an improvement in public service, due to the responsibility of the former absolute majority PS government and continues with the PSD/CDS government,” citing “delays in regularizing the immigrants’ status” and service inertia.
There is “a total dehumanization of a public service,” compounded by the “current government’s refusal to adopt suitable solutions to ensure AIMA provides a quality, effective, and rapid public service,” concludes the PCP.
To mark the second anniversary of AIMA’s creation, Lusa requested interviews several times with government and institutional officials, but has not received a response.
