Created by the PS government, following the prolonged dissolution of the Foreigners Service, following the death of a Ukrainian citizen at the hands of agents, AIMA lost many members to the Judicial Police and the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN), inherited 350,000 regularisation processes – which increased to 400,000 by the end of 2023 -, opened recruitment competitions and became bogged down with requests, five thousand per month.

The announced objective for the creation of AIMA was to separate the police issues from the administrative issues related to immigrants, seeking to respond in a more humane way to the requests made.

The management of the borders remained in the hands of the PSP and, at the end of the year, the organisation had its first crisis, with many asylum seekers sleeping at the airport due to the lack of response from AIMA services.

After the general elections, the new PSD/CDS government announced its intention to change the law, removing the management of return processes from AIMA in June (returning them to the PSP) and ending the expressions of interest, a legal resource that allowed a foreigner with a tourist visa to request regularisation provided that he had 12 months of contributions.

In August, the government appointed Pedro Portugal Gaspar as president of AIMA, replacing the leader appointed by the PS, Luís Goes Pinheiro, who was to lead a mission structure responsible for regularizing pending processes within a year.

This was the mechanism most used by immigrants to request regularisation, creating an overload in the system.

Legal action

The lack of response from the services led thousands of immigrants to force AIMA to respond through the courts, with such a volume of administrative summons processes in the courts that the Ministry of Justice created a specific team.

At the same time, the government extended the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries) mobility visa, signalling priority to Portuguese-speaking citizens, and promised to reinforce consulates for work visas, something that has not yet been done.

The abrupt end to expressions of interest generated controversy and parliament approved a transitional period for those who had already received the required amount of deductions but had not started the formal process.

However, the cases of people who already had deductions, although insufficient, or those who arrived on a tourist visa and are actually working have yet to be resolved, a limbo that immigrant associations warn about.

Flora Silva, from Olho Vivo, regrets the “inhumane neglect” that thousands of immigrants have been subjected to, but she trusts that parliament will make the government back down and reinstate a “solution similar to the expression of interest that allows those who work here to regularise their status”.

The end of SEF was precipitated by the death of Ihor Homeniuk, and the family's lawyer, José Gaspar Schwalbach, who is an immigration specialist, also gives a negative assessment of AIMA's activity, due to the problems in the transfer of administrative powers, which “confused immigrants and made renewal processes difficult due to changes in the location of the service, difficulties in communication between systems”, among other issues.

In addition, “the increase in procedural issues that had already been occurring before October 2021, when it was decided to close SEF, continued, and the scarce human resources transferred to AIMA were unable to respond to all requests”, he accused.

The “administration, bound by the principle of good faith, should be the first to recognize that the deadlines for tacit approval had expired and to issue the appropriate decision to grant and produce the residence permit. But it does not do so”, lamented the lawyer.

On the other hand, at airports, “the political decision to assign the management of Temporary Installation Centres to the PSP” has “compared these Temporary Installation Centres to prison facilities” and the “entry refusal processes” show “serious flaws, with a lack of justification or even notification of decisions, with foreign citizens boarding return flights even while legal proceedings are pending”.

In the judicial sphere, “only the criminal investigation, which was transferred to the Judicial Police at the right time, has proved positive, allowing for the optimisation of resources and the unblocking of processes that were completely suspended until 2023, to the detriment of citizens”, he added.

Investment

In turn , Thaís França, ISCTE researcher and migration specialist, recalled that the “end of the SEF was more than necessary”, because “immigration is not a police problem”, but the creation of AIMA was not accompanied by investment.

“An agency was created without providing technological capacity or resources, there were already delayed processes, and the laws were being changed several times, which shows the lack of continuity of migration policies”, summarised the researcher, considering that this process “had everything to go wrong. And it did.”

As a result, the “idea of ​​securitization associated with a view of immigrants, seen as criminals”, grows, but also the narrative that “we need to guard our borders”, in line with several European countries.

“The current government was against the end of the SEF and now, diplomatically, it reinforces the police to look at migration from the perspective of security and not integration or reception”, he accuses, who rejects the idea that the number of immigrants in Portugal is disproportionate.

Data for 2023 shows growth in line with other European countries, which shows that the idea that “immigration is completely unregulated is a fallacy”.

“Today, the spirit of AIMA is completely distorted, in terms of its origins”, accused Thaís França.