A problem that has been going on since last year and has reached inhuman dimensions. The Government reached an agreement with the Bar Association to try to speed up pending immigration regularization processes in Portugal.
Hundreds of immigrants continue to wait for more than a year to obtain a residence card. An essential document to have access to healthcare and to be legal in the country.
“It’s the fourth night we’ve come here and we don’t have a password, because they only give out 15 to 20 passwords. There are many people with children, in the cold and they don’t give us a solution”, one of the immigrants at the door of AIMA in Porto tells SIC.
They changed house, country, found work in Portugal, but continue to have their residence document blocked and, as a result, prevented from having access to basic situations.
The lack of answers for people who, in many cases, are alone, speak another language and are constantly faced with Bureaucratic blockages and system failures.
A problem that has been going on since last year and has reached inhuman dimensions.
O Government made an agreement with the Bar Association to try to speed up pending immigration regularization processes in Portugal. He promises to bring the processes to zero by the end of June.
In Lisbon, the Telheiras center helped speed up processes
In the Lisbon region, there are immigrants who say that the process is progressing faster since the Telheiras service center opened. The space is part of the mission structure created by the Government to respond to the thousands of pending processes.
Bruno Lima is from Rio de Janeiro. He arrived in Portugal a year ago, when he submitted his expression of interest to AIMA. Completed the residence regularization process on Monday morning.
“Everything is already formalized, now we just have to wait. Compared to other people, it was quick”, he tells SIC.
Bruno’s cousin has been in Portugal since 2019. He only got his residence card in 2022.
But there are those who waited longer. The pandemic delayed the processes even further and, without regularized residence, there are lives that have been put on hold.
It is call center in Telheiras opened four months ago. It is part of the Government’s mission structure to respond to the thousands of pending processes. Despite the large turnout, immigrants say that the service has been effective.
Of the 400 thousand cases that were pending in September, the Government guarantees that it has already responded to at least 150 thousand.
