According to an official source in the office of the Minister of the Presidency, this procedure was based on a “regulatory decree (no. 1/2024) of January 17, 2024, approved by the previous government, which ordered new fees to be applied to the cases then pending”.
The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) has requested the payment of fees of up to 400 euros to immigrants with pending authorization processes, within 10 days, in order to speed up the response to accumulated requests. An official source in the office of the Minister of the Presidency said that he had learned of the measure on Thursday and stressed that the government will present a “different response”, which will be part of the action plan that the Executive is preparing.
“Today the government learned of an AIMA procedure according to which communications were sent to migrant citizens regarding authorization processes that had been pending, in many cases, for a long time. The government has also learned that citizens have been asked to pay sums of up to 400 euros within a very short period of 10 days, otherwise their applications will lapse,” confirmed Notícias ao Minuto.
According to the entity, this procedure was based on a “regulatory decree (no. 1/2024) of January 17, 2024, approved by the previous government, which ordered new fees to be applied to the processes then pending”.
“It is admitted that AIMA understood its actions as being bound by rules dictated by the previous government, and that it acted in order to achieve a benevolent objective of speeding up the processing of the thousands of pending cases that it inherited from the inadequate process of extinction of the Aliens and Borders Service (SEF). However, the way in which the procedure has now been altered for thousands of people, many of whom are vulnerable, could lead to socially and economically difficult situations,” it said.
In this vein, the government considered that “the goal of resolving the hundreds of thousands of pending cases deserves a response that, while effective and streamlined, is socially fair and balanced”, and indicated that this “different response will be part of the action plan that the government, as it has already informed, is preparing and will present shortly, following a series of hearings that are underway on a daily basis”.
The news was reported by Antena 1, which pointed out that many of the people concerned were worried that they were victims of a computer scam.
However, the AIMA workers’ union argued that the measure could help to close the backlog of cases, since some of the immigrants no longer live in Portugal, according to the media outlet.
