At a press conference following today’s Council of Ministers meeting, António Leitão Amaro said that the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), with about 400,000 pending administrative processes for immigrant regularization, “will have its service centers and resolution operations for these pending cases functioning in September, in various parts of the country, with the largest center located in Lisbon.”
“This Government has a response for the 400,000 pending cases, which may not actually be as many, as many may have already left the national territory, desperate with the lack of response from the Portuguese State. We promised and created a mission structure, which is functioning, contracting spaces with local authorities, other entities and NGOs, with the Orders, to have service centers and back-office teams to start processing these cases much more quickly,” said the Minister of the Presidency.
When questioned about the AIMA workers’ strike, who refuse to work more overtime until the end of the year in protest against the lack of resources to deal with accumulated work, the minister associated the strike with “a malaise generated by the extinction of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF)” and the way the transition to AIMA was carried out.
“It’s true, we can’t help but agree, I myself referred to this several times, the way SEF was extinguished, in a slow death, how AIMA was weakened by the previous Government was profoundly wrong,” said Leitão Amaro.
The minister pointed to a “concern for immigrants who chose Portugal and who over the past seven years presented to the Portuguese State, many of them under the terms of the law, requests that were not answered,” stating that “the expression chaos,” used by a union representative and quoted today by Leitão Amaro to describe the situation experienced at AIMA, “perhaps can be applied.”
Regarding the payment of overtime hours, demanded by the striking workers, the government official said that “what is legal and due, naturally, the State is a person of good and will pay,” adding that the agency “does not have a shortage of financial resources, it has a shortage of human resources.”
“We have measures, we have resource allocation and we will together solve another dramatic problem, disrespectful of many human beings, which we received from the previous government, which in this matter failed glaringly,” criticized the minister, who guaranteed that unions and the Government are in contact.
Still on the service centers that will start operating in September, Leitão Amaro emphasized that this is “an extraordinarily complex operation, because it has an administrative dimension, of processing and verifying documentation and then face-to-face service, re-verification, collection of biometric data and subsequent issuance of documents.”
The mission structure includes a reinforcement, for one year, of 300 elements for AIMA and will be in operation until June 2, 2025, and includes two types of reinforcements.
Leitão Amaro explained at the end of June in parliament that, on one hand, there is a “group of specialists, involving AIMA workers and former SEF inspectors” who “can help with the administrative and documentary processing of pending cases.” This group will include 100 people, divided into teams of 10.
On the other hand, the mission structure includes resources to reinforce face-to-face service, with biometric data collection, for a total of two hundred elements.
At the time, he mentioned that “at least three service centers” would be created, with 60 to 70 people, but “with integration principles,” including other complementary services that help immigrants in their relationship with the Portuguese State.
In addition to linguistic support, these new centers will have structures from the Institute of Employment and Professional Training, Social Security, and also migrant associations.