Beefed response capacity ‘dealing with 5,000 immigrants per day’
AIMA, the state agency for migration, integration and asylum, is rapidly getting to grips with the gargantuan backlog of residency requests inherited from the disbandment of SEF, the former foreigners and borders service.
Of the 400,000 requests for regularisation that were unresolved in June, 108,000 have already been rejected, minister for the presidency, António Leitão Amaro has told Público/ Rádio Renascença. A further 113,000 are being processed, and quite a number may already be ‘obsolete’ because the citizens involved have left the country.
This progress has been possible thanks to AIMA’s “increase in response capacity” (ie by hiring more staff).
Today, the agency is able to process up to 5,000 immigrants a day. When the government took office, it was struggling to deal with 800 a day.
The absence of an immigration policy, “and profoundly wrong choices” had essentially “left the state paralysed”, Leitão Amaro told his interviewers.
As for the notification of rejections, he stressed “this is very important for foreign citizens who were here in an undignified situation, because they didn’t have papers, their access to housing and access to the labour market was deeply impaired, so their lives were suspended – but it is also very important for the Portuguese”.
Asked when the number of immigrants to be regularised will finally become ‘normalised’, Leitão Amaro pointed to ‘next summer’.
In response to president of the National Council for Migration and Asylum António Vitorino, who has called for more ‘boldness’ in immigrant legislation, the minister said that meetings with the employers’ confederations are scheduled for next week to regulate a migration regime that will allow “rapid processing” while maintaining “effective control and co-responsibility of the employer for regular labour migration”.
Source: Jornal de Notícias
