Minister claims AIMA response capacity increased by 25%
The Minister guaranteed that new support centres will open in various regions of the country in the coming months, with the goal of solving pending processes within a year.
The Minister of the Presidency, António Leitão Amaro, visited the new centre of the Mission Structure of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), which opened its doors on Monday to resolve the more than 400,000 pending cases.
Speaking to journalists, the Minister spoke of a “complex” operation, but said that he was confident that these cases would be resolved, explaining that AIMA’s response capacity had increased by 25%.
However, he admitted that the problem will not be “resolved today”.
According to the Minister, the new centre, located at the Hindu Community Centre in Lisbon, will attend 240 a day during its first week, which represents a 25% increase in the agency's response capacity.
“We hope that over the next few weeks, each week, this figure will increase significantly,” he said. He expects that by the end of month and during October the center will attend “close to twice as many people”.
The Minister of the Presidency emphasised that only those who can’t present all the necessary documents won’t be able to complete their application process.
He added that those who don’t present their passports can’t even start the process, while if any other documentation is missing, the immigrant will have the right to reschedule the appointment.
“What we’re doing here is resolving pending cases, carefully checking that the people who can reside in Portugal fulfil the requirements of Portuguese law,” he clarified.
‘Their criminal record is checked, the employment relationship is checked, the legal requirements to work legally in Portugal are checked,’ he said.
Leitão Amaro stressed that the service centre was created to assist “foreign citizens who have been waiting and despairing, in some cases for several years, for the Portuguese state to respond to a request in accordance with the law”.
In regards to the new centres set to open in various parts of the country, Leitão Amaro said that “they are at an advanced stage of finalisation and regulation”, some of them in partnership with local authorities, and that they should start operating in the course of the month.