Portugal extends validity of immigrant documents & visas until June 30, 2025

Lisbon: Portugal has extended the validity of documents and visas for immigrants for one year, until June 30, 2025.

In a bid to tackle the massive immigrant regularisation backlog, authorities in Portugal have introduced several measures.

Recently, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) revealed that there are a total of 410,000 pending immigrant cases in Portugal.

Portugal’s government has decided to extend the validity of documents and visas for immigrants for one year until June 30, 2025.

In addition, the government also created a mission structure for the recovery of pending processes, Schengen.News reports.

Through a statement, the government of Portugal notes that it approved a decree-law that assigns to the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) a mission of proactively attracting immigrants, taking over and valuing the Migration Observatory as an organ of those government agencies.

Portugal’s government also approved a resolution that creates a Mission Structure for the Recovery of Pending Processes at AIMA, which will be responsible for analysing and deciding pending processes for the regularisation of foreign nationals, according to a report from Portugal News.

Mission Structure will operate until June 2, 2025, and will have up to 300 people dedicated to functions related to both the administrative processing of cases and assistance to applicants.

Recently, the President of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), Luís Goes Pinheiro, said that there are a total of 410,000 pending immigrant cases in Portugal.

In order to deal with the situation, Pinheiro said that the Migration Agency would hire over 100 employees. However, the number is not enough in order to meet the needs.

He committed to proceeding with more than 400,000 thousand pending cases by next summer.

When this AIMA management took office, it promised to resolve the pending issues and complete the processes of AIMA users within the due deadlines. It promised to do so by the summer of 2025. What I want to say here is that we are going to do that.

The President of AIMA also ensured that such problems were being resolved while guaranteeing that over half of the pending processes had already been paid by the immigrant applicants.

Earlier this month, the Portuguese Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA) revealed that last year, more than one million internationals lived in Portugal.

AIMA noted that the number was the highest ever registered, accounting for a 130 per cent increase compared to 2022 statistics.

A report from Diario de Noticias revealed that a total of 392,000 more people received residence permits last year, in comparison to 2022 statistics.