Demonstration against long delays in the granting of residency cards
Several months of fruitlessly waiting for their residency cards led dozens of desperate immigrants to hold a demonstration outside the AIMA asylum agency office in Portimão on Monday morning.
The protest was held by immigrants working in the hotel, restaurant, construction, and agriculture sectors who banded together in an attempt to make their voices heard.
At the root of their protest are the long delays in the attribution of residency cards which are taking a heavy toll on their lives, they told SIC.
Without this vital piece of documentation, they are unable to legally leave Portugal to visit sick family members or deal with the death of parents and children, or even be legally hired. There are also cases of immigrants who are denied access to continuous medical care as they cannot be granted a family doctor without having a residency card.
As SIC reports, most of the immigrants are from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, although the long backlog of cases that require AIMA’s attention is also affecting immigrants of other nationalities.
AIMA, which replaced Portugal’s former border agency SEF in October 2023, has responded to SIC by saying that it was tasked with 350,000 cases when it replaced SEF and that its goal is to resolve all pending cases by the summer of 2025.
In other words, some immigrants may still have to wait over a year before receiving their residency card…
