Portugal’s main Portuguese parties are agreed on one salient point: the objectives of AIMA, the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum, created two years ago from the ashes of SEF, have failed (spectacularly).
But they do not agree on whose fault it is.
PS Socialists (who created AIMA) blame the current centre-right government, and the government blames the PS.
Contacted by Lusa on the ‘second anniversary’ of an agency that has become synonymous with interminable queues and inefficiency, PSD, Iniciativa Liberal and CHEGA “acknowledged that the institution has several problems, but pointed the finger at the Socialist management, which allowed the exponential increase in immigrants” that has snarled up AIMA’s workload.
PS, Livre and CDU/ PCP communists however accuse the government of “wanting the agency to fail, through the promotion of incorrect policies and lack of investment”.
PSD’s António Rodrigues has a wider view: “It’s not possible to talk about the AIMA of two years ago, or the current one, without talking about the whole process that led to its birth, the terrible way SEF ended, with administrative agony and an inability to make effective decisions following the near destruction of the border control system itself.”
The functions of SEF (Foreigners and Borders service) and the High Commission for Migration were merged into AIMA, which inherited around 400,000 ‘pending cases’, mostly related to expressions of interest, which the AD government rapidly brought under control.
“There was no administrative machine that could take care of the scale of the problem, and what we had to do was resolve the outstanding problems and chase the damage,” explained Rodrigues, considering AIMA “has a negative image because it was born crooked“, in spite of its overarching responsibility for people’s lives.
So what happens next?
“The government has approved a mission structure to support the regularisation and renewal of documents”, says Lusa – albeit CHEGA is still not satisfied with monitoring and wants the “strengthening of the control aspect” of immigrants, with the creation of a body “with migratory monitoring powers”.
Other parties meantime are not convinced that anything will work any better now than it has since the beginning.
AIMA “was created with a heavy inheritance” that “has been unable to reverse”, Iniciativa Liberal’s Rui Rocha put the general perspective into one uncomfortable sentence.
Lusa concludes that “to mark two years since the creation of AIMA, Lusa news agency has on several occasions requested interviews with those in charge of the government and the institution, but has so far received no response”.
source material: LUSA
