In a parliamentary hearing, Pedro Gaspar Portugal explained that the services would send, in the coming days, a “block of 76,000 rejection notifications”, because these applicants did not respond to the notification initially sent to schedule a meeting.

Of the 446,000 pending regularisation processes associated with expressions of interest – a legal resource that the current government eliminated and which allowed the regularisation of immigrants with a tourist visa as long as they had one year of discounts and residency in Portugal – 250,000 appointments were made, which corresponded to 233,000 appointments, explained the leader of AIMA.

Now, “the remainder [between the services and the number of pending processes] has to be seen because there was an impediment to complying with the notifications” on the part of the applicants, said Portugal Gaspar.

In this sense, the services must send a total of 213,000 rejection notifications, in view of which “the citizen can still come to the process to express his interest” in a “hearing of interested parties”, then passing the case on to instruction.

Often the lack of response is related to changes of address, leaving the country or regularisation through processes other than the expression of interest.

During the assistance, there were “people who appeared and who even had an international arrest warrant”, verifying “completely flagrant situations” that had the support of the judicial authorities, explained the person in charge of AIMA.

Currently, 100,000 cases are being investigated, for the evaluation of documents and regularisation requests, with “133,000 on the way”, Pedro Portugal Gaspar told members of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees.

And it will be during the instruction process that it will be possible to verify the applicable documentation, whether the applicants have a clean criminal record and whether they meet the required requirements.

In total, of the 446,000 pending processes, around 10,000 residence permit cards have already been issued, after the investigation was completed.

“It’s a long and rigorous process,” explained Portugal Gaspar.

In 2024, AIMA received more than a million emails and 600,000 phone calls, situations that generate “great pressure on the institution and on workers,” he acknowledged.

As part of family reunification processes in 2024, the services granted 35,000 residence permits, relating to descendants and ascendants of people who already had their situation completely regular in Portugal, corresponding to an increase of four percent compared to 2023.

“Few institutions are under pressure like AIMA has been,” said Pedro Portugal Gaspar, who also lamented the pressure coming from the Judiciary, with thousands filing lawsuits to request the scheduling of their processes.

“It’s not that we’re afraid of legal action”, but “it doesn’t make sense for administrative and documentary processes to be resolved in court”.