Report on migrant backlog shows foreigners living in Portugal in 2024 leapt to 1.6 million
Portuguese authorities estimate that there were almost 1.6 million foreign nationals living in Portugal in 2024, according to the interim report released today on work to clear the backlog of cases pending at AIMA, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA).
According to the document, at the end of December 2024 there were 1,546,521 foreign citizens registered in Portugal – a figure that “should be corrected upwards, predictably by another 50,000” once the processing of regularisation requests under the âtransitional regimeâ created by Portugal’s parliament is completed.
As Lusa explains, these rules opened the door to the regularisation of the residence status for those who were already in Portugal before June 3, 2024, the date on which the existing ‘expression of interest’ route to residence was eliminated (a legal avenue that allowed anyone making social security contributions to obtain a resident’s card, even if they had entered on a tourist visa).
“It is estimated that, with this revision, the number of foreigners in Portugal in 2024 will be around 1,600,000,” states the report, emphasising that the work of AIMA’s Mission Structure for the Recovery of Pending Cases implied “a statistical correction to the number of foreign citizens in Portugal in the years before to 2024.”
This was from “1,044,606 to 1,293,463 in 2023, which represents an increase of 248,857 compared to the figure presented in the Migration and Asylum Report for 2023,” the document reads.
According to the report, since June 3 last year “there has been a 59% reduction in the flow of foreign citizens entering Portugal with a view to obtaining a residence permit.” But there has still been the matter of dealing with the “446,921 expression of interest cases” pending.
In addition to these figures, there are 61,648 foreign nationals residing in Portugal “under the temporary protection regime for displaced persons from Ukraine.”
The AIMA Mission Structure came into operation in September 2024 and, according to the government, has made it “possible to respond to foreign citizens on hold, assess the number of foreign citizens who are in national territory, collect their biometric data, criminal records and carry out other security checks and checks on their contributory and professional status.”
With regard to pending expressions of interest, a total of 261,101 cases have been scheduled and 177,026 cases have been ânotified for cancellationâ. But the bottom line is that Portugalâs percentage of resident foreign nationals has gone from what was calculated at 10% in 2023, to 15% in 2024 (the total resident population being 10.6 million people).ND
Source material: LUSA
