Crowd complains of having to wait months – even for simple renewals
An indignant crowd of citizens from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India gathered outside the Lisbon office of AIMA (the newly-formed agency for migrations and asylum) this morning in protest to the time it is taking to sort out their residency applications.
In some cases, people are desperate to become legal in order to be seen as legally employable; in others they are simply waiting for ‘renewals’ of authorisations that have since expired.
According to the complaints, there are cases that have been left ‘waiting’ for more than nine months.
Says Lusa, “Ashiqul Islam was among the protestors with his wife and nine-month-old daughter, who already has Portuguese nationality as she was born in Portugal”.
From Bangladesh, the couple want to take their child to visit grandparents, but they dare not leave the country without renewed residency authorisations, for fear of not being allowed back in.
Ashiqul told Lusa that “in spite of his daughter being born in Portugal, he does not qualify for social benefits because his authorisation of residency has not been renewed”.
He is quoted as stressing that “a little while ago he went for a job interview which he says went well. It was for a job for which he had the necessary qualifications. But he ended up being excluded after they asked him if his situation in Portugal was ‘regularised’, and he had to reply that it wasn’t”.
AIMA’s delays affect everyone similarly: a number of European foreigners have equally complained to our offices in the past.
AIMA was formed following the ‘extinction’ of SEF (the former foreigners and borders agency), and inherited over 350,000 pending applications.
Source material: LUSA
