Luís Goes Pinheiro, president of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) said last week that the agency has 410,000 pending immigrant cases in front of it, according to Diário de Notícias.
In October, AIMA inherited 327,000 pending residency applications from Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF), the beleaguered and much maligned agency AIMA was created to replace and, presumably, improve. (In all of 2022, SEF only managed to issue residency to 143,081 people, according to Público.)
Given the remaining backlog, AIMA appears to be resorting to similar wash-your-hands-of-it tactics previously employed by SEF.
On Wednesday this week, AIMA “approved a one-year extension of the validity of documents and visas for immigrants,” Natasha Donn writes in Portugal Resident.
What’s more, AIMA is putting at least 300 people on processing the 410,000 remaining cases, according to Portugal Resident.
No news, we’re sorry to tell you, on whether that staff will pick up the phone more regularly than SEF did.
