Thousands of AIMA lawsuits, and permits waiting for collection // Traffickers using Portugal to sell children in Europe

Portuguese news in English on Wednesday, April 23, 2025.

Thousands of AIMA lawsuits, and permits waiting for collection

Thousands of new lawsuits continue to be filed against the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) every month as immigrants try to speed up the legalisation process, Diário de Notícias reports. There were more than 5700 filed in February, well down from the monthly average of roughly 7700 since the government set up a special taskforce to deal with the problems in September. Several lawyers told the paper the majority of the cases were filed in an attempt to bypass the delayed administrative route to obtain a residency permit, with some foreign workers left waiting more than two years. As it stands, family reunification visas are essentially only available with the help of a lawyer and there are problems with renewing documents since that service was removed from the website in May. That pushes some people to the Institute of Registries and Notary (IRN) but many permits can’t be renewed there either (official government advice here but I make no promise it will work for you).

There are about 8000 residency cards waiting in AIMA offices because their owners couldn’t be found, Público reports, citing the agency’s boss. AIMA president Pedro Portugal Gaspar said the cards were accumulating despite repeated attempts to find the recipients. He also issued a reminder for people to attend their appointments, saying about 15% of people were failing to show up every day, taking space from others waiting. Immigrants who were seen in the Lisbon AIMA mission centre whose cards were returned to sender should get an email alerting them to pick them up, while those seen in Porto can go to the National Centres of Migrants' Integration Support (CNAIM) on Avenida de França. Anyone seen at a normal AIMA office should return there.