ZAP
Immigrants at the door of AIMA, in Porto
The entity is unable to complete the supposed 4 thousand regularizations per day. And immigrants are to blame.
The Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) reached, at the beginning of November, the capacity to serve 4 thousand immigrants per dayhaving opened 20 new posts spread across Portugal.
However, explains the , this number is only in theory, since, in practice, not as many migrants are regularized as the entity would like. And it is often said that the fault lies with the immigrants themselves.
Many miss appointmentswhich has already led AIMA to issue a report on this. Furthermore, various documents are often missing, the most common being criminal record certificates and proof of address.
And there are even those who show up without passports. In the absence of documents, the queue created at the entity’s door is a waste of time and a waste of resources: the regularization process is stalled and may be rejected.
According to the lawyer Tatiana Kazanin statements to Público, “this happens, mainly, with Asian immigrants. They look for a lawyer or a solicitor before the appointment date to obtain the documents, but this takes time”. According to the lawyer, There are many immigrants who even call lawyers while they are in line.
He also adds that, for Brazilians, this process of obtaining the missing documents “is faster, but, in other countries, it can take weeks”.
However, Kazan recalls, there is a recurring crime called illicit attorneyship. Crime victims pay around 50 euros to a person who undertakes to submit Expression of Interest documents on the platform, but the criminal “does not deliver the login nor the password or it even disappears with the immigrant’s money“he explains.
In these cases, it is not, of course, the fault of the immigrant, but in most cases it is, says the lawyer: “I think that, in the case of these people, immigration is not taken seriously”.
