AIMA, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum, has today ruled out any risk of irregular status for immigrants with expired documents who have ongoing cases with Portuguese authorities.
The deadline for the latest administrative extension expired on April 15 – and immigrants who do not yet have new documents can use an online certificate issued via the AIMA portal to ensure their legal status – even if their case has not yet been concluded, says the agency.
“AIMA clarifies that there is no situation of irregularity regarding the stay within national territory for foreign nationals who have a renewal or regularisation process underway and are awaiting a final decision on their applications,” AIMA tells Lusa.
Since March 2020, the validity of residence permits has been successively extended “automatically and provisionally, through decree-laws, without effective verification of the conditions for renewal or of actual presence in Portugal”, the agency points out.
“This government decided to intervene, to restore state control and assure the effective monitoring of those who live in Portugal”, AIMA goes on. As a result, there is now “a digital portal where people interested in renewing their authorisation of residency can put their names” and “since June 2025, out of a universe of around 100,000 renovation processes in this regard, roughly 90,000 have had a final decision.”
Of approved applications, 87% of cases “have already received their residence permit, whilst the remainder are legally protected by the certificate of approval recently made available on the AIMA portal, which confirms their lawful residence in the country”.
“In the case of citizens covered by the CPLP schemes, Expression of Interest (MI) or Transitional Scheme who have pending applications, it is sufficient to demonstrate that an application is in progress and awaiting a final decision, namely through the Proof of Application Status and, where applicable, the Proof of Approval – and this does not result in any situation of administrative irregularity”, explains AIMA, failing to acknowledge that it does however leave applicants ‘tied to Portugal’: they cannot leave, because a certificate from AIMA will not be recognised by other countries. And this is what is causing a lot of anxiety and stress among the many thousands of people holding ‘expired papers’.
Ana Paula Costa, president of Casa do Brasil de Lisboa – the largest association of Brazilian immigrants and the country’s largest foreign community – explained earlier this week that, in many cases, even after applications for residence permits have been completed, the delivery of documents has taken far too long. “We have observed some effort to speed up this visa issuance process,” but “there are still too many delays,” she considers.
Dissatisfaction isn’t helped by the news that neighbouring Spain has just approved a diploma that regularises upwards of half a million undocumented immigrants, giving them instant residency status, access to state health care and the social security system.
